The political thriller Rendition feels like it was ripped out of news headlines and then processed through Hollywood's melodrama factory.
That makes this a less-than-stellar American debut for South African director Gavin Hood (Oscar-winner for his searing race drama Tsotsi). Yet Rendition is a good movie, just not a great one.
The film's structural and storytelling weaknesses diminish the impact of the shocking themes it explores, particularly as time passes and the shock wears off.
Yet the cast works at the highest level. This is a true ensemble in which Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Peter Saarsgard, Alan Arkin, Omar Metwally and Yigal Naor sublimate any ego problems they might have about sharing screen time to move the plot forward.
That plot, overwritten by Kelley Sane, is built around an American anti-terrorist law muscled into law by Bill Clinton (which is acknowledged in the film). It allows the "rendition" or surrendering of people, in this case to countries which use torture to extort information.
Torture has been discredited by many experts as useless, even in the war on terrorism. But, in this movie, it becomes a central theme and an abuse of human rights.
There is another subplot showing how radical Muslims manipulate youths into becoming suicide bombers. But the identity of one of them in Rendition just seems like a ridiculous plotting device.
In this fictional, time-fractured story, an Arab-American (Metwally) is removed from a flight home to the U.S. from South Africa. After a terrorist incident in his original home country in north Africa, the CIA links the suspect to the terrorists.
The man is sent back to that same country (although scenes were filmed in Morocco, the country is unnamed, although I assumed it was Egypt on first viewing, perhaps because Metwally is of Dutch-Egyptian heritage).
There he is questioned and tortured by a wily but brutal police chief (Naor), while a rookie American agent (Gyllenhaal) looks on in bewilderment and disgust, yet does little to remedy the situation.
Meanwhile, the man's blue-blooded American wife (Witherspoon) spirals into a panic, then into action. Her husband has virtually disappeared and the government refuses even to admit the CIA has seized him under the rendition law.
Throughout the movie, government types (Saarsgard, Arkin in a cameo and especially Streep in a strong support role) do the dance of disinformation.
One fascinating aspect of Hood's casting and direction is giving the anti-terrorist, at-all-costs rant to Streep. She plays the high-ranking official who directs the CIA operation, giving torture her stamp of approval.
Streep, confronting both Witherspoon and Saarsgard in separate scenes, is chillingly effective. So much so that you momentarily agree with her rant, even when everything else you see on screen screams the opposite view.
Witherspoon carries the emotional weight of the film on her slender shoulders. Her finely tuned performance brings a human dimension to what might have been just a thriller. Gyllenhaal brings melancholy, as the weak character who cannot stomach what he witnesses and yet takes forever to act.
Rendition, when it was first announced for the Toronto filmfest, appeared to be positioned for an Oscar campaign. That enthusiasm is now gone.
Yet any movie that deals with contemporary spying, national security paranoia and the abuse of human rights -- in America and abroad -- should be seen by audiences who want their movies to at least touch on reality.
While truth is stranger than fiction, even melodramatic films can focus those truths.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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