| Rendition | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Gavin Hood |
| Produced by | Steve Golin David Kanter Keith Redmon Michael Sugar Marcus Viscidi |
| Written by | Kelley Sane |
| Starring | Omar Metwally Jake Gyllenhaal Reese Witherspoon Peter Sarsgaard with Alan Arkin and Meryl Streep |
| Music by | Paul Hepker Mark Kilian |
| Cinematography | Dion Beebe |
| Editing by | Megan Gill |
| Studio | Level 1 Entertainment Type A Films |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | September 7, 2007 October 19, 2007 October 19, 2007 November 22, 2007 January 9, 2008 January 17, 2008 April 18, 2008 |
| Running time | 122 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $27,038,732 (Worldwide) |
Rendition is a 2007 drama film directed by Gavin Hood and starring Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin, Jake Gyllenhaal and Omar Metwally. It centers on the controversial CIA practice of extraordinary rendition, and is based on the true story of Khalid El-Masri who was mistaken for Khalid al-Masri. The movie also has similarities to the case of Maher Arar.
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CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is briefing a newly arrived CIA agent in a square in an unnamed country in North Africa (filmed in Marrakech) when a suicide attack kills the latter and eighteen other people. The target was a high-ranking police official, Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), who is in liaison with the United States and whose tasks include conducting interrogations, and even overseeing the application of techniques amounting to torture. Fawal escapes unscathed.
Egyptian-born Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer who lives in Chicago with his pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), their young son and his mother, is linked to a violent organization by telephone records indicating that known terrorist Rashid placed several calls to Anwar's cell phone. While returning to the United States from a conference in South Africa, he is detained by American officials and sent to a secret detention facility near the location of the suicide attack depicted earlier, where he is interrogated and tortured. Isabella is not informed and all records of him being on the flight from South Africa are erased, although records remain of him boarding the plane at Cape Town International Airport and making a purchase enroute.
For lack of more experienced staff, Freeman is assigned the task of observing the interrogation of Anwar, whose interrogator is Fawal himself. After Freeman briefly questions Anwar, he is doubtful of Anwar's guilt. However, his boss, Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep), insists that the detention continue, justifying such treatments as necessary to save thousands from becoming victims of terrorism.
Growing worried, Isabella travels to Washington DC, where she meets up with an old friend, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), who now works as an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), and pleads with him to find out what has happened to her husband. Initially, she is informed that there had been a mistake in South Africa and Anwar was not on the flight, but Isabella presents Anwar's credit card record, which shows that Anwar had purchased something in the in-flight duty free shop, thus confirming that he was on the flight. Smith slowly pieces together details of Anwar's detention. He is unable to convince the senator, nor Corrine Whitman, who had ordered the rendition, to give proper details of the detention, nor to release him. After the senator advises him to let it go, as he is currently fighting to have a bill passed in Congress and it is not the right time to start debating an extraordinary rendition, Smith advises Isabella to get a very good lawyer he knows on the case, but she refuses. Upon hearing the confrontation from her office, his sympathetic secretary quietly tips Isabella off on when Whitman will be next in the office. The next day, Isabella confronts Whitman, but Whitman pretends not to know anything and avoids her questions. Frustrated, Isabella storms out of the office, only to go into labour in the hallway.
Eventually, Anwar confesses to have advised Rashid on how to make more powerful bombs, and to have been promised $40,000 in return. Freeman, suspicious that it is a false confession, asks Anwar where the money is and Anwar's response is that it was supposed to be delivered to him in South Africa, but the courier failed to show up. Freeman's suspicions are confirmed when he has the names Anwar gives traced by Interpol and draws a blank. He then Googles the names and finds out that they are the names of the Egyptian soccer team from the year Anwar left Egypt. He also expresses doubt as to whether Anwar would be willing to put his life, family and job in danger for $40,000 when he earns $200,000 a year in his job. He quotes Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in a discussion with the minister of the interior on the value of intelligence gathered through torture:
Without the consent of his superiors, and not caring what happens to him, Freeman gets a warrant for Anwar's release and sends him back to America via a clandestine ship to Spain. When Lee Mayers, his immediate boss, calls him to tell him to give Anwar back to Abasi Fawal, he simply hangs up. Angered by the injustice Anwar has suffered, Freeman then leaks the details of Anwar's detention to the American press, creating a scandal that humiliates Whitman and Hawkins.
Another story line is shown in parallel. Abasi's daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach) has run away from home with her boyfriend Khalid (Moa Khouas). Fatima sees a picture of Khalid's brother, but he does not tell her what has happened to him. Abasi is told that Khalid's brother was an inmate at his prison and later died. Fatima is unaware that Khalid is a member of a terrorist group until his friends are arrested at a planned march and he leads her to the terrorist group's base. Near the end of the movie, Fatima discovers a notebook that contains pictures of Khalid and his brother together, showing that they were extremely close, as well as a picture of the two brandishing AK-47s, then some pictures of a grief-stricken Khalid standing over his brother's corpse, some pictures of her father and finally a statement saying that Khalid is doing a deed in revenge for his brother's death. Realizing that Khalid's brother met his death at the hands of her father and that Khalid is about to assassinate him, she runs off. It is then revealed that this second story took place before the suicide attack (From the briefing with the CIA agent in the beginning we know that the first story took place after the suicide attack). At the town square Fatima begs him not to do it, arguing that the target is her father. After removing the pin of his detonator he hesitates, and is therefore killed by the organizers of the attack. As a result he releases the handle of the detonator, and the bomb explodes, killing Fatima also. In the present, Abasi rushes to Khalid's apartment and discovers his grandmother, who is stricken with grief over the loss of both her grandchildren and Fatima. Abasi then realises that his daughter died trying to protect him and is filled with grief himself.
The record of a phone call supposedly made by Rashid to Anwar is not explained in the film. However, earlier it was mentioned that phones are sometimes passed on from one person to another in order to avoid phone tracing (the DVD extras explain that there was a subplot dropped from the film that elaborated on this concept). Yet despite this reasonable doubt the CIA officials refused to release him. It turned out that in South Africa, while Anwar's phone was off, there had been a call to it from an unknown person.
Reviews for Rendition were mixed. At Rotten Tomatoes, it achieved a 47% Tomatometer from 146 reviews. And based on 34 reviews, the film averaged a score of 55 at Metacritic.[1] Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars out of four, saying that, "Rendition is valuable and rare. As I wrote from Toronto: 'It is a movie about the theory and practice of two things: torture and personal responsibility. And it is wise about what is right, and what is wrong.'"[2] In contrast, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone applauded the cast, but noted that the film was a "bust as a persuasive drama".[3] Travers declared the film the year's Worst Anti-War Film on his list of the Worst Movies of 2007.
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