Rendition

After reading The Dark Side, which dealt in part with the U.S.'s extraordinary rendition program, I was interested to see the 2007 film Rendition, which came out in 2007 with little attention.

The film, directed by Gavin Hood after his Oscar-winning film Tsotsi, is credited to one screenwriter (Kelley Sane) but seems to have been a victim of group-think, with studio fingerprints all over it. It tells the story of an Egyptian citizen, married to an American, who is pulled off a plane by the CIA, who suspect him of having terrorist ties. He is then sent, without due process, to a secret prison, a "black site," where he is interrogated to the point of torture. This, of course, is no fiction, and his case seems to have been modeled after that Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who was nabbed in Macedonia and kidnapped to Afghanistan, where he was held and tortured for several months, even though most who were close to the situation thought he was innocent. He continued to be held because of a woman in the CIA (unnamed due to security issues) had a hunch that he was dangerous, a hunch that was ultimately shown to be wrong.

The woman with a hunch in Rendition is played by none other than Meryl Streep, who has three our four crisply-acted scenes. She is among a handful of big stars that populate Rendition, but none of them have much to do. Reese Witherspoon is the suspect's wife, and nothing against Witherspoon, but her casting is a kind of extreme storytelling. It's not enough that the man is innocent, but he also has to be married to America's sweetheart (and she is extremely pregnant to boot). Jake Gyllenhaal gives a sleepy performance as a green CIA analyst who watches the torture, and decides to defy orders and help the man, another bit of Hollywood fairy dust. Alan Arkin makes a small appearance as a U.S. senator, and Peter Sarsgaard does a nice turn as Arkin's assistant and Witherspoon's friend, who does all he can to help before he hits an impenetrable wall.

The film is earnest and takes the unambiguous stance that programs like extraordinary rendition are antithetical to America's laws and values, but there's something unseemly about it being handled like any typical Hollywood film. The scenes of torture don't approach the horrors of what actually happened, and the relatively quick rescue of the man, without mention of those who were incarcerated for years, or still are, is an insult. Also, a subplot involving the daughter of the head interrogator getting involved with a terrorist cell is underdeveloped and ultimately adds nothing to the film.