Camden New Journal - Movies: Rendition

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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 18 October 2007

Streep excels in a tale of our times

RENDITION - Directed by Gavin Hood
Certificate 15

I DON ’T mind admitting that I’m a sucker for
any conspiracy thrillers.
Rendition is an example of the best of them: intelligent, thought-provoking, superbly acted and utterly professional.
Screenwriter Kelley Sane’s multi-layered script is an enormous challenge for any director. Gavin Hood, Oscar winner in 2006 for best foreign language film (Tsotsi) pulls it off with relish.
The tension is stretched so taut that it will glue you to your seat, from the first reel as a suicide bomb goes off in a North African town, killing an American agent among the victims, to the final shattering twist in a savage tale of intrigue and duplicity.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays a CIA analyst on his own in a hostile world, a tool of the US government forced to witness the interrogation of a suspected Egyptian terrorist (Ornar Metwally) sent back home following the policy of “extraordinary rendition”. That is otherwise known as “abducting foreign nationals deemed a threat to national security for detention in secret overseas prisons.”
But is the suspect innocent? His distraught wife (Reese Witherspoon) is convinced he is. Uncle Sam isn’t. Her husband is shipped off in chains with a hood over his head on the orders of the CIA’s terrorist chief (Meryl Streep) and incarcerated in an underground cell run by the secret police chief (a chilling portrayal from Igal Naor) who will stop at nothing to get to the truth.
Meryl Streep is at her best in a role tailor-made for her, once again cornering the market in icy contempt. “This is a nasty business,” she says dismissively down the line to the analyst. “You’re new at this, aren’t you?”
“This is my first torture,” he replies stonily. Gyllenhaal conveys the impotent despair of a man who has to remain silent while watching the victim strung up by his wrists, naked, with water poured over him until he chokes.
It isn’t pretty to watch. But it is a powerful indictment of the orchestrated violence meted out by both the good guys and the bad for their own ends – whichever side they’re on. In the end, disturbingly, we have to make up our own minds.

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