"Rendition" is a protest film against torture. We know during the Iraq war and since 9/11 torture has been going on in order to gain information against terrorist groups, but this film asks does it really work?This is the story of what happens when an innocent man is mistaken as a terrorist and is then tortured for information, when he is tortured enough he tells the people what they want to hear simply because he can't take it anymore.
The film takes different points of view, there's the man who is accused and tortured against his will (Omar Metwally) we see his wife (Reese Witherspoon) try to find out what happened to her husband, the man who is charge of torturing the suspects (Yigal Naor) the Senator who ordered the torture to be done (Meryl Streep) and the C.I.A. man who witnesses the torture being done first hand (Jake Gyllanhaal).
The wife soon goes to Washington to ask a favor of an old boyfriend (Peter Sarsgaard) who is now a Senator's aid to find out what happened to her husband. Evidence comes back to suggest he was in fact a suspect in a terrorist plot and was sent to a prison. Meanwhile Gyllanhaal's character who was in fact present at the attack and saw a colleague sitting beside him die must now act as an observer to the interrogation of the suspect. Gyllanhaal becomes our everyman we are suppose to feel what he feels as he sees this innocent man subjected to inhumane treatment.
The man in charge of the torture himself is trying to find his daughter who ran away and may be involved with one of the main men responsible for the terrorist plot.
There are in fact two men who are tortured in this film, one man is innocent and has no information to give and but another man who is guilty of terrorism does. Perhaps the director is showing us that torture is a double edged sword yes it does get information but how much of it is true and how much of it is made up in order to escape anymore pain?
These are the questions this film asks and it has the courage to ask them rather than to be coy. It does so in bold a bold melodramatic tone, for me perhaps sometimes it does go over board but at times I was swept up in the emotion and the heart of the film I was overcome with emotion.
The most powerful scene for me is near the end when we go back to how the terrorist plot that caused all this avoidable pain came to be.
The acting is also very powerful, Gyllanhaal is making a name with himself as being a great everyman type and along with his other great movie he did this year "Zodiac", he really gets us to understand this character and as an audience gets to understand what he's going through. Another performance that stuck out for me was Sarsgaard playing a man who wants to do the right thing but is caught in the middle of his loyalty to Witherspoon's character and his bosses. It's a tricky role and he could've played it without any heart but we do care for him.
The director of this film is Gavin Hood who directed the Oscar winning foreign film "Tsotsi" which is another great practice in melodrama.
This film is an open criticism of the things we know went on and is still going on today. It's hard to know exactly how much information is retrieved from torture and how this really helps us. The ending is in a way a happy one but in another way it isn't. What it does tell you is the experience of torture will stay with you no matter what.
3.5 out of 4 stars
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