Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
Gavin Hood
Cast :
Omar Metwally ………. Anwar El-Ibrahimi
Reese Witherspoon ………. Isabella Fields El-Ibrahimi
Aramis Knight ………. Jeremy El-Ibrahimi
Rosie Malek-Yonan ………. Nuru El-Ibrahimi
Jake Gyllenhaal ………. Douglas Freeman
Moa Khouas ………. Khalid (as Mohammed Khouas)
Zineb Oukach ………. Fatima Fawal
J.K. Simmons ………. Lee Mayer
Meryl Streep ………. Corrine Whitman
In the past several years, there have been several good to mediocre films that have arrived during Oscar season are so seemingly one-sided they can be reduced to a single statement. One could save two hours and the cost of a movie ticket for one of these “Talking Point” films that have been released over the years.
Syriana could’ve just featured George Clooney stating “U.S dependence on foreign oil is bad.”
Babel could’ve featured Brad Pitt stating “The inability to communicate meaningfully amongst some cultures in the world is bad.”
Fast Food Nation could’ve featured Greg Kinnear stating “Our dependence on cheap fast food can be unhealthy and bad.”
Even Crash, which was universally praised and won an Academy Award, can be reduced down to the simple statement “racism is bad” from Brendan Fraser.
Along those lines comes Rendition, which can be broken down to the simple phrase “extreme rendition is bad.”
The act of rendition, for those unfamiliar with the concept, is when a suspect is removed from the soil of a country and transported to another for the purposes of interrogation. It’s not exactly a new phenomenon, as it has been used by presidents over the last century, but has recently has come into light with foreign terrorists being transported overseas from America to foreign jails. It’s a volatile debate, as weighing the pros and cons of the debate have not reached any sort of middle ground. The need to prevent future terrorist acts weighed against the value of the information, as well as foreign jails generally don’t feature the most sympathetic of interrogators, makes the debate a bit murky at best.
Rendition is another in the long line of what has been dubbed “hyperlink” filmmaking. The film features several plots that mesh amongst one theme. Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) has an Arabic husband who didn’t get off his plane from a trip into North Africa. The husband (Omar Metwally) is being interrogated by a CIA Agent (Jake Gyllenhaal) under the direction of Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep). Isabella tries to find out what’s happening through an old friend (Peter Sarsgaard), who works for a Senator (Alan Arkin). There’s another subplot involving a romantic liaison between a terrorist and the daughter of an ambassador. And while it emulates all the good film making processes that a film like Traffic first brought to the screen, it does it without any of the heart or style to it.
Rendition is here for one reason: to make a point. It isn’t a good film by any stretch of the means; it’s in fact a particularly bad one. The problem is that the script moves from one big talking point to the next in order to hammer down a specific, complex argument into a sound bite. While movies with political themes are always welcome, when it gets to the point where there’s a singular mindset about getting an argument across as opposed to making a great movie it ruins everything about it.
It starts with an amazingly weak script. While it does one particularly clever plot device involving one of the subplots, for the most part it is relatively sloppy in terms of how it handles things. In particular the film’s final act stretches the realm of credibility to the point where some events are wholly implausible. There’s a terrific film waiting to come out of this but is lost in the sort of stark contrasts a film about a situation with plenty of grays demands. This isn’t a serious film about the subject; it’s theft of a great cast that’s misused royally.
That’s the one thing about Rendition that is the most frustrating. With several Academy Award winners and nominees lined up, including the always impressive Meryl Strepp, one would think this would be an easy task. Director Gavin Hood, whose work Tsotsi won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Picture, takes what could be good characters and makes them relatively one dimensional. It’s disappointing that a film about such a rich topic could be diffused to such unnecessary measures. Someone is going to make a great film about the act of extreme rendition someday. It isn’t Hood, who’s Rendition is a failure of spectacular proportions.
FINAL RATING (ON A SCALE OF 1-5 BUCKETS):
