Rendition (Hood, 2007)

[madali]

Rendition (Hood, 2007)
IMDB Links

One of my secret fears is that one day I will travel to the west, ask by some guy in the airport to come with them for a second, and then be secretly held in Guantanamo Bay or some US-allied Arab country for a couple of years. I’m an Iranian and my first name is “Mohammad Ali”, seems like it would be unlikely for it NOT to happen. Plus, I don’t have a second Canadian or Australian citizenship, so my own government will neither have any influence nor any interest in me. I’d be just random guy in some random jail for a random amount of years. If the choice for the bureaucracy is to do nothing with me or release me, I’m sure the choice would always be do nothing. Even if there is 0.01% chance of me being a terrorist, I mean that is still not a gamble most politicians want to take.

“Rendition” is about this. A bomb goes boom in an unnamed Arab country and some poor Egyptian (with an American green card) gets arrested in an airport and tortured, as they assume he is part of the terrorist network.

What is great about this movie is that is not just about this character, but everyone surrounding him. Screen time is given to his American wife who tries to know what has happened to him, the Arab torturer who is not some evil grinning maniac but someone who wants to keep his country safe, his daughter and her boyfriend, an American CIA agent who is viewing torture for the first time and is conflicted, and so on.

I suppose what to me is most tragic and this is not implied in the movie, but attention is given to the Egyptian character because he has a US Green Card and an American wife and child. Plus, he looks American enough for the audience. What if it was someone Pakistani with no family in the west? Or a Saudi? Or me?

4/5

[fizz]

Great film...and this guy is now making Wolverine....Yay!

[theoddball]

I've seen this and liked it a lot.

Bio of the actor (Omar Metwally) who played the hapless Egyptian, from IMDb:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1272540/bio

Pretty impressive credentials, I must say.

[madali]

Looked pretty western to me though

[theoddball]

The guy is half Dutch and was born and raised in the States. I think it's fair he looks at least part Western.

[ayaa1977]

***SPOLILER ALERT*** Don't read any further if you want to watch this film!

It occurs to me that Rendition is a film made by a liberal for liberals to appease their sensibility and provides an outlet for their Whiteman guilt. I am surprised you guys are all praise for this film. It is all preachy and its message is on the nose, and in case we get it in the first time, Jake Gyllenhaal conflicted CIA agent will spell it out for us by the end of the film.

Let me be clear, I didn't hate the film, it has some redeeming qualities. Reese Witherspoon and Peter Salsgaard storyline has a good payoff. Good people will cave in and ignore doing the right thing if the price is too high for them, which is realistic observation for the human nature. You would have think that Salsgaard's character would have came out as the knight in a shining armor for the damsel in stress, but not this time around.

 Also the two young Arabic lovers storyline was will done, and what impresses me more is how they made them speak a fairly clear and neutral Arabic dialect instead of English with thick Arabic accent, that is a big positive move and new to Hollywood, that helps sell the story and makes us sympathize with them. What I didn't like about it is the conventional and unimaginative way Fatima discovers the truth about Khaled by reading the scrapbook which tells his entire story, it is really a dump solution to announce the final reveal. Then came the time trick, which I admit, it came from the lift field and surprised me. That's being said, it serves no purpose whatsoever other than being a cool trick up Gavin Hood's sleeve. The same trick was used more efficiently in Saw 2 and it was ten times more powerful, and a necessary payoff for the audience.

I also should mention that the Egyptian American actor Omar Metwally who plays Anwar El-Ibrahimi who was a great discovery for me and was excellent in playing the role. By the end of the film, and after all the things he suffered, his face and his walk convey the toll of that torture better than a thousand words. 

Gavin Hood is clearly a good craftsman, but from what I have seen of his two Hollywood films, he is not a very good artist, and I don't think I am so eager to see his future project the way I am with some one like Christopher Nolan, Jason Rietman, or Rian Johnson

My Rating is 2.5/5.