Movie Review: Rendition

There will be spoilers! Be forewarned!

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In what could and should have been a gripping tale of families torn apart, the politics of torture, and cover ups, Rendition fails to captivate the viewer in any way. We are featured to a shallow storyline whose layers seem to be added haphazardly and with no kind of sense. The characters are as deep as a teaspoon and the plot leaves you thinking, "Wait...what?" and not in a good way.

The story begins in earnest with Isabella Fields El-Ibrahimi (Reese Witherspoon) who, 8 months pregnant may she be, is playing soccer with her son in the front yard. She calls her husband, Anwar (Omar Metwally), who is in South Africa for a conference on chemical engineering. He says he'll be back at 7:30 and she says she'll meet him at the airport. The next thing we know, a suicide bombing occurs in some African city. It could be anywhere in the Middle East, judging from the architecture, people, and weather. Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is thrust into leadership of what is apparently a CIA bureau in this city when the bomb kills his superior, who was sitting next to him in the back seat. The bomber's target, Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), is an interrogator at one of the secret rendition prisons used by the U.S. government. Fawal escapes.

In some dark bedroom, Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) answers an important-looking phone that says 'secure', so we know it's super-secret. She says she'll be right in, then says perhaps the only amusing line in the film when her husband complains that it's an ungodly hour in the morning: "I'm sure they scheduled [the bombing] just to spite you." I've got to hand it to Meryl Streep--she made the movie bearable, even if she had an affected southern drawl and a bad case the under-eye bags. One thing she didn't seem to have was a conscience. Whitman thought nothing of sending people to painful torture and possible death if she had a reason to believe they may know something about terrorists or planned terrorist attacks.