Salt Lake Tribune Review
I went into “Rendition” with my guard up, afraid it would be another well-meaning but structurally flawed modern political drama with a simplistic bumper-sticker message.
Seeing the lead character - Isabella Fields El-Ibrahimi (
Reese Witherspoon), the pregnant wife of an Egyptian engineer, Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), who disappears without a trace after being detained by the CIA - didn't fill me with hope. If ever there were a movie figure ready to become a plaster saint, it's Witherspoon with a baby bump.
But surprise, “Rendition” allays those qualms with a compelling and timely story about flawed people making personal compromises, while also presenting a thoughtful, multilayered look at the issues behind American policy in the War on Terror.
When a suicide bomber strikes in an identified North African city, killing a CIA field worker, the repercussions are felt around the world. El-Ibrahimi, on his way home to Isabella in Chicago from a conference in Cape Town, is arrested, interrogated and - under orders from a ruthless CIA official in Washington, Corrine Whitman (
Meryl Streep, relishing the menace of her character's soft Southern accent) - shipped off to the same North African city under the policy of “extraordinary rendition.”
The death of the CIA field worker means an untrained analyst, Douglas Freeman (
Jake Gyllenhaal), must step in to observe the local head of a secret prison, Abasi Fawal (Igal Naor), interrogate El-Ibrahimi. “This is my first torture,” a shaken Freeman tells Whitman over the phone. She curtly repeats the Bush administration's talking point, “The United States does not torture.”
Meanwhile, Isabella calls upon a former college boyfriend, Alan Smith (
Peter Sarsgaard), to help her find her husband. Alan is an aide to a powerful senator (
Alan Arkin) who resists spending his political capital on a case that could brand him “a bin Laden lover.”
Fawal, the target of that suicide bombing, also is missing a loved one. His daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach), rebelling against an arranged marriage, has run off with a classmate, Khalid (Moa Khouas). But Fatima is troubled by Khalid's behavior, particularly his hanging around at a militant madrassa.
Director
Gavin Hood, making his Hollywood debut after winning the foreign-language Oscar for the South African drama “Tsotsi,” shifts neatly among the multiple story lines and, in one smartly orchestrated twist in
Kelley Sane's script, jumps the timeline. He also channels the movie's star power, as the storylines usually place the actors in isolation - Witherspoon has just a single scene with Streep and Arkin, while Gyllenhaal is never onscreen with his Oscar-winning co-stars - highlighting the loneliness of this bureaucratic and moral tangle.
Only in the final reel, as the subplots wrap up a little too nicely (especially for anyone who reads the news), do the grit and urgency of “Rendition” begin to wane. But for what's being sold as Hollywood entertainment, the movie's insistent message about the morality and effectiveness of torture packs an unexpected and politically timely punch.
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* SEAN P. MEANS can be reached at movies@sltrib.com or 801-257-8602. Send comments about this review to livingeditor@sltrib.com.
The rundown: A woman (
Reese Witherspoon) looks for her husband, who has been sent by the CIA to another country for torture, in this timely and nail-biting political thriller. 120 minutes. (S.P.M.)
Synopsis: Douglas Freeman, a CIA analyst based in North Africa, is forced to question his assignment after he witnesses the brutal and unorthodox interrogation of an Egyptian-American by secret North African police. Anwar El-Ibrahimi is the Egyptian-American chemical engineer whose family emigrated to the States when he was a boy, now suspected of a terrorist act. His pregnant wife, Isabella El-Ibrahimi, does everything in her power to find her missing husband, who has seemingly disappeared during a flight from Cape Town, South Africa to Washington, DC, by enlisting the help of a politically-connected college friend, Alan Smith. Alan, an aide to Senator Hawkins, uncovers the troubling fact that Anwar has been shipped off, on the orders of the CIA's head of terrorism, Corrinne Whitman, to a third world country for interrogation. Abasi Fawal is the head of the secret prison who has personal problems of his own with a rebellious daughter Fatima and her Islamic fundamentalist boyfriend Khalid.
