This entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Drama, Movie Reviews, NEW ON VIDEO, R. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Rendition (2007)*** 1/2
Director: Gavin Hood
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Omar Metwally, Jake Gyllenhaal, Zineb Oukach, Moa Khouas, J.K. Simmons, Meryl Streep, Peter Saarsgard, Alan Arkin, Yigal Naor.
Halloween is coming but years have passed since I had to check my closet for monsters before bed and even longer since I wondered whether werewolves really came out in the park at night. Writer Kelly Sane and South African director, Gavin hood have given grown-ups a real monster to fear and it’s an American government policy called extraordinary rendition, whereby people can be detained without due process and clandestinely sent to countries to be tortured. I don’t know about you, but that scares me more than werewolves. This heavy-handed film uses some big-name stars to offer an opinion on this issue. There are a lot of characters, here, and not enough time to really give them much depth. The acting is good and the story is compelling, though it is emotionally manipulative and rather clichéd. I would have liked a deeper story with fewer characters but this is still an entertaining and slightly informative couple of hours.
Reese Witherspoon is a young mother named Isabella, who is living an idyllic life when her husband, Anwar (Omar Metwally), an Egyptian citizen, is secretly detained by the CIA, upon his return to the US from South Africa, as a suspect in a bombing. He is quickly shuffled out of the country by a power Senator, played by Meryl Streep and is soon being tortured under the observation of a CIA analyst played by Jake Gyllenhaal. Meanwhile, Isabella is contacting a college friend, Alan (Peter Saarsgard), who is now an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), to help her find out what has happened and get her husband back. You got all that? Good, but we are not finished yet. There is also another story involving Abasi Fawal, played by Yigal Naor, a local secret police leader, who is supervising Anwar’s interrogation, which seems to mostly consist of determining the voltage used. Abasi’s daughter has fallen in love with a young student and gone missing and we also follow their relationship. Do you think we have enough characters here? What about the waiter who served them tea? Doesn’t he have story, too? The ending is rather predictable and a key character’s motivation is not convincing to me.
Overly complex with a feel slightly like Babel, though it is more cliched and has a different message for us about how to promote world peace. I have been pretty critical in my review here, but this is still a pretty good movie and does handle its large cast fairly smoothly, though character development was necessarily cut short. I would have rather seen some characters cut. Overall, still a pretty good effort that will please those with an interest in the subject.
