Review of “Rendition”
South African lawyer turned film director Gavin Hood made a huge impact in 2005 with his film Tsotsi, and now follows it up with a timely and superbly structured thriller that examines the morality and personal impact of State-sponsored torture. The title of the film refers to the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” used by the United States Government to move terrorism suspects to countries outside America where they can be held and interrogated without the protection of the law. The film couldn’t be more well-timed, given current controversies over the practice of “waterboarding” and President George W. Bush’s use of extra-judicial military commissions to prosecute terrorism suspects.
In Rendition, we first meet Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) who has lived in America since he was fourteen and has an American wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) and a young son. Returning from an overseas conference, Anwar is “picked up” by the CIA at Chicago airport and flown to a secret destination in North Africa for questioning. There, recently promoted CIA agent Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) watches as interrogator Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor) tries to extract the information that CIA boss Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) is expecting. Superbly intertwined with this story is another more local, more poignant tale of Fawal’s daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach), who is infatuated with a young man under the spell of radical Islam.
The moral and legal issues explored in the film are hugely significant , but Kelley Sane’s screenplay keeps the story running at a very personal level – it’s about the heartfelt impact of terrorism and torture for mothers and brothers, husbands and wives, rather than any easy to rationalize political or philosophical perspective. Clearly realising the dangers of this, Hood keeps his top shelf cast operating at low key level and carefully avoids turning the film into melodrama (although there are a couple of moments of excess).
The performances from most of the cast are powerful and understated, in particular Naor - the family man and torturer - and Gyllenhaal, whose character is the quiet conscience of the piece. Australian Dion Beebe’s cinematographer is flawless, but more impressive than this is the structure and careful pacing of the film, Kane and Hood slowly bringing the two stories together in a gripping climax. It’s a highly intelligent and thought-provoking thriller that deals with some uncomfortable issues.
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