Reviewed by Neil Davey
Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Omar Metwally, Reese Witherspoon,
Meryl Streep, JK Simmons, Rosie Malek-Yonan,
Aramis Knight, David Fabrizio, Zineb Oukach
Written by Kelley Sane
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 120 minutes
Directed by Gavin Hood
Director Gavin Hood's last film, Tsotsi, was an, er, unusual choice for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. That level of award suggested it was the best foreign film of the year when, in truth, it wasn't even the best foreign film of the week. Accordingly, this personal jury was out on Mr Hood pending more examples of his work. And thus the personal jury reconvened this week for Rendition, Hood's very smart study of shady US government policy which does indeed prove that sometimes the Academy gets it right. It's a corker.
It's the first in a forthcoming wave of 'war on terror' movies — Lions For Lambs and Redacted, to name but two others — and if the rest are half as good, we're in for some serious provoking of thought. Rendition focuses on the alarming policy of 'extraodinary rendition' — a policy that gives the US authorities carte blanche to abduct foreign nationals perceived as a threat to national security and interrogate / torture them in secret overseas prisons. In this instance, the foreign national is Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Metwally), an Egyptian-American chemical engineer. He's lived in the US for years, is married to an an American woman, Isabella (Withespoon), but circumstances have conspired to suggest that he's involved in terrorism and he's seized as he travels back from business in South Africa. As Isabella approaches Congress (in the form of Peter Sarsgaard and Alan Arkin) to establish her husband's whereabouts, Anwar is being held in a North African prison, with his torture — by Abasi Fawal (the excellent Igal Naor) — supervised unwillingly by new and naive CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Gyllenhaal) on behalf of the CIA's head of terrorism, Corinne Whitman (Streep, effortlessly sweeping to another Oscar nomination).
Hood steers the story and this impressive ensemble cast to great heights, probing this shocking policy in painful detail. He juggles the elements expertly and, just as you're assuming such injustice is a black and white issue, a clear cut human rights issue with no room for debate, Hood — and screenwriter Kelley Sane — throw in a stunning twist that makes you question the motives and thought processs of pretty much every character and smudges the entire issue back into shades of grey. Without this little trick, Rendition would be a superbly acted, hugely important film. With it, it becomes the sort of film that could see Hood pick up another statue next year.