10-22-07, 12:41 pm

Movie Review: Rendition Directed by Gavin Hood

Extraordinary rendition is the hush-hush US policy of abducting foreign nationals who are deemed to be a threat to national security and transferring them to secret overseas prisons for interrogation.

Dubbed torture by proxy by its critics, it was first introduced under President Clinton back in the 1990s, but it reportedly took off in the wake of September 11 and President Bush's war on terror.

This has been vehemently denied by the Bush administration. In a radio interview in April 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice insisted that the US does not transfer people to places where they know they will be tortured. Yet they allow people to be detained at Guantanamo Bay detention center for years without charge and where some inmates claim to have been tortured.

Directed by academy award winning Gavin Hood (Tsotsi) and written by Kelley Sane, Rendition explores both sides of the coin. A bomb goes off in north Africa and US soldiers apprehend Egyptian-American Anwar el-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), who is suspected of a terrorist act, as he arrives in Washington.

He's unceremoniously shipped off to north Africa. His pregnant wife (Reece Witherspoon) does everything in her power to find her missing husband.

Rendition makes the case for the necessity for torture as well as the argument against, but it lets the audience decide for themselves.

Meryl Streep as the CIA head of terrorism very eloquently points out that torturing one person is worth it if it saves thousands of lives.

Jake Gyllenhaal as a CIA analyst based in north Africa becomes ambivalent when he witnesses the brutal interrogation of Anwar el-Ibrahimi by secret north African police.

The dilemma is that a trained terrorist will presumably give nothing away under torture, while anyone else will say whatever his interrogators want to hear to make them stop. So what's the point of it?

This is a thought-provoking and compelling topical thriller. The action moves deftly back and forth from north Africa to the US.

Just one niggle – the twist at the end felt more like a cheap trick and slightly spoilt what was otherwise riveting viewing.

From Morning Star