TIFF Review: Rendition
Filed under: Action, Thrillers, New Line, Theatrical Reviews, Festival Reports, Celebrities and Controversy, Politics, Toronto International Film Festival
"Did we polygraph the Egyptian?"
"He came up clean."
"Polygraph doesn't mean diddly."
'We always say that when they pass."
"Put him on the plane. ..."
That exchange comes early in Gavin Hood's new film Rendition, between senior intelligence officer Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) and her underling (J.K. Simmons). 'The Egyptian' is Anwar El-Abrahimi (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer of Egyptian descent who's been living in Chicago for years, with a wife (Reese Witherspoon) and son and another baby on the way. But Whitman doesn't care about that; Anwar's phone has been receiving calls from a number linked to a known terrorist, so after a conference which sees him flying back to Chicago he's plucked from his flight, hooded and bound and taken to an unnamed North African country, where the head of the local intelligence branch, Abasi (Igal Naor), will try to crack him. CIA field paper-pusher Doug Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is there to observe, not to apply the electric shocks or pour the water until Anwar can't breathe or hurl him naked and shivering into a too-small cell -- because, hey, America doesn't do that stuff. But, through the Clinton-created, Bush-approved invention of 'Extraordinary Rendition," we can ask other people to do it, and pay them to do it, and make all the arrangements to have it happen. ... Anwar's suffering will stop when he tells what he knows. But what if he doesn't know anything?
And so Rendition flows, skipping between stories and continents and shades of the truth. We see Witherspoon's search to find out what happened to her husband, a hunt so desperate she's forced into hounding an ex-lover (Peter Sarsgaard) who works in a Senate office. We watch Abasi and Freeman working Anwar, trying to make him relinquish facts he may not even have. And we also watch Abasi's daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach) reach out to change her life through the love of a radical-leaning student, Khalid (Moa Khouas). Everyone has secrets, and no one is without sin.
Hood' s direction globe-trots with a spring in its step, and he's got a handle on action, too. The cast is uniformly fine -- Witherspoon loving and worried, Gyllenhaal passionate yet conflicted, Naor civilized but cruel. There's some excellent supporting work as well; Alan Arkin plays Sarsgaard's Senator boss with gruff doses of realpolitik, and Metwally suffers and squirms and still keeps us guessing. The Khalid-Fatima relationship works, too, and Oukach and Khouas actually do some of the finer acting in the film below the glare of the star-studded cast. Rendition feels like a weird hybrid of styles -- it has all of the trappings and airs of the modern techno-thriller (right down to the titles in the lower right-hand corner of the screen explaining where the film is) but it's got all the emotional scenes and longing-driven moments of a relationship drama. This sounds like a very bad pitch -- "It's Black Hawk Down meets Not Without My Daughter!" -- but Hood, and screenwriter Kelley Sane, keep the film from being too glib or glossy.
Some critics are finding Rendition to be too little, too late, a condescending, lofty 'liberal' attitude about many well-made and well-intentioned films that always infuriates me; just because you read a New Yorker article about a subject three months ago doesn't mean that everyone's as informed as you are, or that it's not a problem anymore, not being done in your name and with your money. Rendition doesn't suggest we live in a safe world, but Rendition also makes it abundantly clear that in a struggle against terrorist criminals, bad police work is almost worse than no police work at all. Rendition also has a too-happy ending -- and the familiar big movie moment where the only thing that can save us from the excesses of American Intelligence is American Intelligence -- but you feel the struggle to get to that point, and no one comes out unscathed. Rendition's not perfect, but it does convey one important lesson very well: Anytime someone tells you that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, immediately demand to see the omelet.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-15-2007 @ 7:22AM
Michael said...
Another excellent review, James. I particularly enjoyed your mini-rant in the final paragraph. So many of these types of films walk the line when it comes to politics. Too little and the film feels inauthentic, too much and it ends up feeling heavy handed. From the sound of it, Rendition may be in the right spot where it ends up simply being a terrific film.
My opinion on these sorts of films is that the film makers should set out to make a good film first, then concentrate on the political statements afterward. That may be quite difficult to do in most cases - especially when a director or screenwriter cannot divorce themselves from their political views enough to engage the average cinema goer. Earlier this week, a similar review was done on the latest Paul Haggis film and the comment was made that it appeared as though less effort was given to making a meaningful and enduring film than simply to strive for the "almighty Oscar". From the sound of it, this film is just the opposite.
Whatever happened to producing quality films that can stand on their own merits, politics be damned? A good film should incite discussion between those who see it regardless of their beliefs, not resort to clubbing one over their heads with a not-so-subtle message.
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10-26-2007 @ 9:04PM
KentDenverCO said...
Great review - looking forward to seeing the movie.
I've seen the omelet quote all over the internet re this movie, but it doesn't make sense: "Anytime someone tells you that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, immediately demand to see the omelet."
Of course you have to break eggs to make an omelet, so why doubt the concept and demand to see the result.
Are you trying to say the omelet is the anti-terrorist system, and you have to crack some skulls to get to get the job done? Well that is a conveniently-defined metaphor that allows for committing sins that up until the late 20th Century was abhorrent to US values and its constitution.
The movie sounds like it drove a spike into the concept of off-shore torture to protect our (yeah right) “clean image,” so let’s not try to plug the dike with this metaphor.
BTW: as pointed out in some reviews, we are terrorists as well. We just do it privately to prisoners and with covert operations and assassinations, as well as second-handedly with airplanes, missiles, tanks, and embargos, versus dirtying our “image” with human, public attacks on innocent people, as do suicide bombers and hijackers.
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10-29-2007 @ 7:00AM
Lou Degado said...
Re: "Anytime someone tells you that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs, immediately demand to see the omelet."
I took it to mean there is a best way to make an omelet: one that does not include shells in the final product.
The way interrogation is practiced in Egypt, and by the Bush criminals, is not the best way.
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