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21/10/2007
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Rendition (2007)
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You’ve got to love political films that take a stab at America’s foreign policy of persecuting terrorists without trial. Or those that talk of locking people away to torture them. This is another one of those films but it is another of these films that follows three different story lines. These require some great editing to allow the audience to see the storyline that matters most at that point of the narrative. This film only does that with a moderate amount of success. The idea of the film is in the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Northern Africa a man arriving on a flight from Capetown is accosted by the CIA and taken to be tortured for information in Northern Africa. The torture is the first storyline. Meanwhile in the US his wife tries to work out why her husband never got off the plane in Chicago. She goes to her friend in Washington who works in a senators office. This is the second storyline. These are the two storylines that matter in terms of the films narrative. The third and mainly pointless storyline is that of two forbidden lovers one of whom is the daughter of a police chief (that’s all I can say). While this third narrative influences the plot it does so in a very minor way and while emotional in nature is pointless and could have been cut for a better run time.
This film is essentially two films, the first about the torture of civilians for information by the CIA and the second about forbidden love. They would be much better served kept in separate films and it would not be missed if cut. This means that unfortunately I blame the failures of this film on the shoulders of the director Gavin Hood. He has done a good job directing some A-list actors in Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Saarsgaard and Meryl Streep and indeed all of the acting in this film is top class. In the process, however, he appears to have let the narrative get away from him. Keeping in the film what is essentially a beautiful and yet worthless storyline. Ignoring this problem the film is good but really not worth being on the big screen this is a DVD movie all the way.
Review by Jonathan Little
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