Rendition – DVD Review

Okay Hollywood, we get it. You have opinions on stuff.
Just because you have opinions on everything doesn’t mean it has to be made into a big budget film. I almost hate to say it, but this movie would almost be better off with Michael Moore behind the camera doing one of his inane documentaries.

This movie is your general Crash style movie, with 4 separate storylines all tying in to one another making a neat little circle that is supposed to make us say “Oh wow, that was cool how all the storylines tied into each other maybe life is all interconnected.” And the general public probably said the first 500 times that type of movie was made. But when you take that kind of movie and throw in a dash of Basic you’re just begging for trouble.

The four main stories are – The teenage lovers who aren’t supposed to be together; an American businessman being sent to a North African prison on suspicion of being a terrorist and the subsequent wife searching for a husband who just disappeared story arc; a father searching for his daughter (the one in the relationship she’s not supposed to be in) while doing his job of torturing the suspected terrorist; and the American CIA agent helping in the torture after his colleague died in the explosion the businessman is accused of helping with. See how they all tie together? Those are all established in the first half hour or so of the movie, after which the movie just kind of goes into a holding pattern for the next hour or so with nothing but Witherspoon’s character crying and yelling and trying to find out where her husband is and the parallel story of her husband being tortured, it all drags on quite slowly. And somewhere along the way you just lose interest, it’s a bad sign for a film when the emotional climactic part of the story “JUST TELL ME WHERE HE IS!” draws no emotion from the viewer. I’m not sure if it’s the storyline, or shoddy acting by Witherspoon, but I just didn’t feel for her there. Of course it’s possible I’m a cold, sadistic male, but who knows.

The Basic part of the movie kicks in at the beginning, but you don’t find out till the end. When the explosion happened, my head said, “Okay, it was that guy who did it.” Only, that guy is in the next scene. Then you follow the movie to try and find out what actually happened, only to find out…it was that guy, they just hid it in a convoluted, backwards storyline.

The two acting heavyweights in the movie have small parts; Streep and Arkin are on screen for maybe a combined 20-25 minutes of a 2 hour movie, and are never on screen together. This eliminates what would have easily raised the acting bar of the movie. Imagine just one scene where Alan Arkin and Meryl Streep on screen together and doing something with the plot and talking amongst themselves rather than just walking away from a hysterical Reese Witherspoon.

The audio is fine but not spectacular, some nice thematic songs.
Video is slightly better, some nifty shots but nothing outstanding.

A Documentary about two individuals who have been through the Rendition process, one of which is suing the US Government over the policy. It’s short, but more moving than the actual movie.
There’s a behind the scenes making of talking about making the set, and setting up the explosion.
Director’s commentary is pretty blah with nothing really all that insightful.

A mix of Crash and Basic, if that sounds like something you’d be interested in, go for it. If you hate our Government, and want another reason to despise them, and you don’t know what rendition is, you would probably like to watch it just to have another reason to complain. Long story short, the policy of rendition is probably a bad idea or as one guy in the documentary says and I’m paraphrasing “It’s a good idea with bad implementation.” Sadly, I can’t say the same about the movie.

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New Line Cinema presents Rendition. Directed by Gavin Hood. Starring Omar Metwally, Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep and Peter Sarsgaard. Written by Kelley Sane. Running time: 122 minutes. Rated R. Released on DVD: February 19th, 2008. Available at Amazon.com.