Rendition

I wouldn’t go so far as to call Rendition a disappointment, but at the same time I am completely unwilling to defend the film. There was a good story somewhere lost in the middle of this. Plus there were good performances next to forgettable performances here. The mixture just never came together and the final product does not hold up to the great films in theaters right now.

The idea of basing a movie on American torture and the rendition of suspects was strong, but the story that was told here didn’t get the job done. When the story was based on the D.C. machinations of Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin, JK Simmons, and Peter Sarsgaard the movie shined. It was passable when it concentrated on angry wife Reese Witherspoon and in over his head CIA agent Jake Gyllenhaal. But when it was about the secret love between the terrorist and the torturer’s daughter everything fell apart. On top of that, they threw in the always annoying screwed up timeline at the end. I hate that and I hate it even more when you don’t know about it till the conclusion. It didn’t help the story; all it did was piss me off.

Rendition shined whenever Meryl Streep or Alan Arkin was onscreen. The two of them were just working on a different level then everybody else. Streep was completely believable as the Senator signing off on extraordinary rendition. She wasn’t menacing or mwahaha evil, this was her job and sending suspects to foreign countries to be tortured is just a tool at her disposal. The other political side was shown with Arkin. He clearly doesn’t agree with rendition but is not going to risk his political career to fight it. The best scene of the movie involves Arkin explaining why he will not be opposing rendition. This speech is given to Peter Sarsgaard who is his usual solid self. It helps that many of his scenes are with Streep and Arkin but I’m not going to hold that against him. It was also nice to see J.K. Simmons show up because he is good in everything he does.

Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gylenhaal do the heavy lifting on Rendition. Neither of them drop the ball but they are the main reasons why there was just something missing from the film. Reese plays pregnant hysterical wife and that’s about it. The weight that there should have been when she is confronting Streep just isn’t there. In fact her screeching was kind of funny. On the other hand you have Gylenhaal who does the best he can but it is just really hard to believe him as a CIA agent. Yeah he is supposed to be an analyst so he shouldn’t been in the field like he ends up but it is still Gylenhaal and I still don’t see him as any sort of commanding presence. Since these two are in the majority of Rendition, well if they are mediocre then you can see where the movie is going to end up.

The worst part of Rendition is the completely unnecessary time-twisted secret love affair. This wasn’t needed for the story and it just distracted from the main plot. I understand that they wanted to tell a story with the non-American characters in the foreign country whose name I can't remember, but this forbidden love story between terrorist and the daughter of Gylenhaal's contact was weak. Worse than that was the fact that it was obvious what was going on. So this took away from any real shocking revelation. The whole movie would have been better if the who thing was completely removed from the movie.

There was a moment in time where I thought Rendition would be one of the great movies of 2007. Well, that did not come to pass. I've gotten over it. There were a couple good performances but the storyline did not hold up and caused Rendition to be just another film. Ah well.

6 out of 10