You can see why director Gavin Hood might have plumped for this project on the back of his Oscar win for 2006’s Tsotsi. Like that earlier film, Rendition boasts a soft-centred human drama beneath its Wider Social Points. The title comes from the term ‘extraordinary rendition’, a shiny euphemism that describes the extrajudicial transfer from one state, usually the USA but also the UK, France, Sweden and Canada, to another (Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Uzbekistan, anywhere that torturing prison services might be availed of). This twisted initiative was the big, bright idea of the Clinton administration though his successors have, as is their wont, taken the ball and run with it.
We must therefore applaud the efforts of Mr. Hood and screenwriter Kelley Sane for attempting to highlight this injustice with a glossy, star-studded political thriller. Their story centres on Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Metwally), an Egyptian-born NYU graduate who is abducted by the CIA while travelling home to Washington from a business trip. His wife, a heavily pregnant soccer mom played by Reese Witherspoon, has no idea where he is, though inquiries through an old flame and government aide (Sarsgaard) soon lead her to a waspy Meryl Streep who presides over the CIA’s anti-terrorist programme.
As it happens, Anwar is locked up in an unnamed North African state where local torture chief Abasi (Naor) administers electrodes and water-soaked hoods to determine his prisoner’s involvement in a recent suicide bombing.
Mr. Hood’s film sprawls into an impressive asana to accommodate the humanity behind the global realpolitik. The CIA officer (Gyllenhaal) presiding over the lawless treatment of the suspect has neither the stomach nor the amorality for his task. Abasi is depicted as a decent family man who cares deeply for his errant daughter (Oukach). Others, such as Mr. Sarsgaard, would like to act on Anwar’s behalf but are compromised by their respective positions. The buck, it would seem, only stops when we get to Ms. Streep’s icy operative but even she has her reasons. “There are thousands of people alive in London today because I did my job”, she snarls at a questioning Sarsgaard.
The performances are, for the most part, all that they should be and Mr. Hood’s direction is assured. The narrative is, initially, a little too wide, too skippy in focus though it ultimately tightens into a taut drama with a doozy of chronological twist.
Still, coming on the back of five years’ worth of movies that either overtly (A Mighty Heart, The Kingdom) or covertly (Saw, The Hills Have Eyes II, just about every movie made) address Iraq and the War On Terror, Rendition feels a little late coming out of the starting gates. We don’t need any more of these pictures. We don’t need such worthy incoming titles as In The Valley Of Elah and Redacted. No, what this generation really wants is a Wild Bunch it can call its own.