Extraordinary rendition is a process that has been used by the American government to capture terrorist suspects and hold them, outside the normal workings of the law and usually in another country. Very often, according to reports, the detainees are tortured.
Even so, director Gavin Hood (whose thought-provoking Tsotsi won an Oscar for the South African filmmaker) strives to avoid being one-sided in the tense and powerful Rendition. By showing both heart-wrenching scenes of beatings and water-board torture inflicted on a suspect by his American interrogators, and Muslim jihadis hell-bent on destruction, Hood makes his attack on two-faced standards of the US even more compelling.
After Egyptian-American Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is kidnapped at a Chicago airport on suspicion of involvement in a terrorist attack in North Africa, novice CIA officer Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is assigned to oversee the questioning. As the innocence of the man becomes obvious, the guilt-ridden Freeman secretly tries to free him.
Reese Witherspoon shines as El-Ibrahimi's grief-stricken wife, and Meryl Streep gives a sterling performance as a ruthless CIA chief in this moving if slightly melodramatic film.
