Film Review №2 : Rendition (2007).

Rendition (2007)

Director: Gavin Hood

Genre: Thriller

Movie Type: Political Thriller

Themes: Terrorism, Crisis of Conscience

Main Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Alan Arkin, Peter Sarsgaard

Release Year:2007

Country: US

Run Time: 122 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Proper names:

Douglas Freeman(Jake Gyllenhaal) is CIA analyst who after the death of his colleague has to investigate the case of terrorist attack.

Isabella El-Ibrahimi(Reese Witherspoon) is a wife of El-Ibrahimi. She is pregnant and worries about her husband. She goes to Washington for help of her collage friend.

Senator Hawkins(Alan Arkin)is a very powerful and successful senator and the chief of Alan Smith.

Alan Smith(Peter Sarsgaard) is Senator Hawkins’ assistant and Isabella’s college friend.

Anwar El-Ibrahimi(Omar Metwally) is Egyptian-born chemical engineer who lives in Chicago with his pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) and their young son, is linked to a violent organization by telephone records indicating known terrorist Rashid placed several calls to Anwar's cell phone. While returning to the US 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.

Abasi Fawal(Yigal Naor) is the head of local police in the place where the terrorist attack was accused. He participates in tortures of Anwar El-Ibrahimi.

Khalid(Moa Khouas) is a young suicide bomber who wants to take vengeance on Abasi Fawal.

Fatima(Zineb Oukach) is the elder daughter of Abasi Fawal who is in love with Khalid.

Corrine Whitman(Meryl Streep) is the head of CIA who is responsible for  the North Africa.

Summaty and Thoughts :

The title of the film alludes to the fact that rendition is ‘handing over prisoners to countries where torture is allowed’. The film gets its title from the phrase "extraordinary rendition", the practice - started during the Clinton years - of transferring suspected terrorists to countries with more lenient feelings about torture. The setting of this film is very complicated as it takes place in Washington and Chicago, the USA, as well as in an unnamed North African nation (filmed in Morocco but clearly meant to be Egypt).  It helps to show all feelings of the main characters and their nearest and dearest.Anwar El-Ibrahimi was detained to help terrorists in the creation of a bomb. He was sent to Africa as it was US policy for rendition, as it was the only way to make people plead guilty in terrorist attacks and so on. Anwar decided to slander himself as he had come to the conclusion that it’s better to tell what they wanted rather than suffered torture.After the death of his colleague Douglas Freeman was assignment to be the investigator in the case of terrorism. To my mind, he didn’t have certain indifference to accused people he tried to reveal human’s emotions. Then he realized that he couldn’t work as a CIA investigator and used torture.Even although being pregnant Isabella tried to find any links connecting with her husband’s disappearance. As Senator Hawkins was worried about his reputation and his political future he decided to refuse to help Isabella.Fatima , Abasi’s daughter, run away from home because of her father tyranny. She preferred to have relationships with Khalid as he was just like a symbol of freedom for her. And only accidentally Fatima came to know that Khalid was a member of a terrorist group. Khalid decided to revenge Fatima’s father for his brother’s death. So the death of Khalid and Fatima was very symbolic as they were very young but terrorism killed them.

The rendition can be  different. But there are people in the world who know how to allocate keenly the mountains of edges , that were on the shelves of misunderstandings - to be able to interpret the words, deeds, actions.This film is a very interesting film as it makes us think that every confession has its prehistory with human’s fates, lives and emotions. It helps us to realize that rendition justly questions whether information gathered though torture is ever reliable, and whether human-rights violations only fan the flames of deadly anti-Americanism and revenge.