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As an alternative to Rendition you could create some form of power-point presentation showing a picture of Jake Gyllenhal with the words "TORTURE=BAD" flashing on and off every second or so. Then you could watch it for two and a half hours. It would be slightly more enlightening and a lot more entertaining than Rendition.
--Spoiler--
Naughty terrorists blow up a market place in an unsuccessful attempt to kill a senior Egyptian police officer and killing Jake Gyllenhall's friend in the process. Because all the planes in America are currently being used for rendition flights the CIA cant send out a replacement for the dead bloke and tell Jake that he has to do the job despite not being a field agent.
A man is stopped at customs while getting off a flight from South Africa and then kidnapped by the US security services. He's an Egyptian chemical engineer who's suspected of having ties with the terrorists behind the marketplace bombing. He's innocent. We know this because he's married to preggers all-American blonde Reese Witherspoon.
After refusing to admit to being a terrorist the Egyptian is renditioned (rendited? rendified?) to Egypt for water-boarding. I always think that it sounds like some kind of sport. I expect to see pictures of happy people surfing with the slogan "Go Waterboarding With the Family" or some such. Anyway -insert generic Arabic sounding name here- is sent to the prison camp run by the police officer and tortured while Jake looks on with mounting horror and increasing conviction that the Egyptian is innocent.
In the meanwhile we see a sub-plot about the policeman's teen-aged daughter being seduced by a bloke who is going to lots of "Allahu Akbar" type meetings. There is also the sub-plot involving Reese trying to get the American government to admit to kidnapping her husband for torture.
Eventually the Egyptian gives up the names of his "comrades" who turn out to be the 1974 Egyptian national football (soccer) side. "Brilliant!" I thought, "Now we get to see ageing footballers having the electricity applied to their nipples." But sadly it wasn't to be. Jake gives in and rescues the Egyptian, presumably loosing his job in the process.
To cut a needlessly long story sideways we eventually find out that the daughter's boyfriend was the suicide bomber from the beginning of the film and that the policeman doesn't realise that his daughter died in the same incident. Bummer, that'll teach him for being a nasty torturer then.
--End Spoiler--
The film falls into the terrifying category of films that want to make you a better person. I can just about tolerate it when it's a film about some horrible abuse that I don't know about but really, anyone who doesn't disagree with the policy of extraordinary rendition either: A) doesn't care; B) thinks all brown people should be tortured on general principle; or, C) couldn't spell extraordinary, let alone know what rendition means.
In the end this film is a bit like Syriana which spent about 7 hours shocking us with the massive revelation that "the oil business is a bit shady". Rendition is a non film about a non issue (given that extraordinary rendition stopped about 2 years ago). Hollywood can make all the movies it likes about these sorts of injustices and it wont make a blind bit of difference because the people who agree with, don't know about or don't care about the policy wont see this film and those that do see it will already share the film makers moral outrage about the issue and will tut and carry on eating their organic, sustainably produced, hand knitted hummus.
score 1/10
gundognc 14 November 2008
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1975437/ |
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30-3-2021 01:08:08