Expediente Anwar

"I fear you speak upon the rack, where men enforced do speak anything." This Shakespearean line from The Merchant of Venice is echoed again in the new film Rendition which introduces the viewer to the "enhanced methods of interrogation", renditions, which began in the Clinton Administration and have become more commonplace since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

The film features an all-star cast, with Oscar winners Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin, and Reese Witherspoon, as well as Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Omar Metwally. Supporting roles filled by unfamiliar actors deliver as well, sucking the audience into the plot, and showing how many people can be affected by overseas terror attacks, and our means of investigating them.

Rendition follows an Egyptian born terrorism suspect (Metwally) who is taken by U.S. officials following his flight from South Africa to Washington DC to an undisclosed prison overseas. His pregnant wife (Witherspoon) ventures to Washington DC to find out about his disappearance through a family friend and Senator's employee (Sarsgaard). Gyllenhaal plays a young CIA analyst at the overseas detention facility who monitors the violent interrogation.

This film follows the emotional plights of the torture victim (Metwally), and those involved in obtaining the supposed information from him. Some, like the CIA analyst (Gyllenhaal), are visibly shaken and horrified by the methods exercised, while others, the stern Senator (Streep) and foreign interrogator (Yigal Naor), see it as necessary and effective.

The film may be described by some as a political piece, but is ultimately an emotional one. Metwally's performance as the tortured prisoner is Oscar-worthy. The film does not intend to preach, but rather to question and inform the audience on a topic that does not often have a human face put on it. Renditions have been known to work, but have also been known to produce false information from innocent prisoners. The film simply depicts the emotional struggles of those involved in such grave business, and does so in a way that will affect every viewer differently. The film will keep your interest, and have you engaged in each of the character's plights.

Reviewed at the World Premiere screening at Roy Thomson Hall, on Sept. 7, 2007 during the Toronto International Film Festival.

On the surface, this would seem to have everything going for it with a solid cast (veterans Witherspoon, Sarsgaard, Gyllenhaal, Streep, Arkin and new faces Metwally, Naor, Oukach, Khouas) a recent hot director (Gavin Hood, dir. of "Tsotsi", winner of the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Film) and a script on a current hot-button issue (the anti-terrorism law of extraordinary rendition which allows U.S. agents to transport suspected terrorists to off-shore sites where anti-torture laws do not apply).

Somehow each of the cast members, perhaps due to the number of major characters involved and thus the reduced screen time allowed for each, come across as superficial stereotypes - the distraught expectant mother, the ex-boyfriend who tries to help, the CIA agent with a conscience, the cold hearted CIA executive, the pragmatic senator, the torture victim, the secret police torturer, the torturer's daughter with a secret boyfriend, the boyfriend with a secret). You're not with any of the characters long enough to identify with them much and when it all gets tied up together in the end a bit too neatly you're just left feeling disappointed and cheated.

Early reviews seem to be mostly praising this but the friend whom I saw it with and another veteran TIFF goer that we see in various line-ups had the same sense of disappointment.

The film just seems too desperate to make it all relevant as it tries to inspire our shock at the wrongs being perpetrated in the name of the anti-terror wars but it mostly comes across as clichéd rather than natural. When the Gyllenhaal character finally builds up the will to act on his moral outrage you're just not convinced about how he's made this character arc as he has spent the first 3/4's of the film either stunned by the effects of a suicide bombing that takes place before his very eyes and then drinking himself into a stupor while occasionally taking time out for an illicit office romance or to bark an order to underlings. It seems Gyllenhaal is the protagonist we are meant to identify with but he is too weak-willed to inspire much audience sympathy. Witherspoon as the distraught expectant mother has more of an immediate draw on our heartstrings but doesn't kick off the expose on the U.S. side of the things which we are pulling for her to do by soliciting help from ex-boyfriend Sarsgaard (who works for Arkin's senator character) after her Egyptian-American husband goes mysteriously missing after a trans-Atlantic flight. There are at least a few moments of fireworks when Witherspoon at least briefly gets to confront the CIA exec played by Streep who is pulling the forced extradition strings behind the scenes, but a few seconds of confrontation doesn't make up for the 90 minutes of gradually increasing tedium that it takes to get there and we still have about 30 minutes to go in the plot after that highpoint. The subplot built around the head police torturer and his family in an un-named North African country is more engrossing and a neat twist is pulled off in that storyline but that wasn't enough to save the picture for us.

I had really been looking forward to this film but something just seemed to be missing in the way it pays off the different plot lines.

Rendition fails to really nail the issue - it chooses instead to show its colours too distinctly.

And what we get instead is a decent political thriller, but one that is difficult to assess in terms of its attempted aim - after all, here we are dealing with what must be one of the emotive issues known to man - can torture ever be justified? Is the utilitarian rule of the possible gains worth the literal breaking of a possibly innocent man? Is he a terrorist, isn't he a terrorist?

This is a very important topic, and a very complex one, that is treated as though it were a film about lobbying on the one hand, showing Washington and the Beltway as a ground for piranhas to make or break their careers, and on the other, in Egypt, a battle for the sanity of all involved there.

Yes, it makes a good thriller; but, and it's a big but, it lacks the true depth of thought, rather than action, that will address the issue, rather than (God forbid) entertain an audience.

Excellent performances from all involved - really. Good steady hand at the helm - but what it lacks is complexity - it seems complex initially but unravels the further down the rabbit warren we go.

I came away uneasy, but not as uneasy as I should have, and non-plussed by the sleight of hand tricks that should have revealed real ambivalence, real moral dilemma, real grey areas, whereras instead I was left with black and white.

Not the film it wants to be, it is a good political thriller, but it is not as effective a piece of cinema as it could have been.

Imagine you have just been on a plane for 18 hours. You have been on a business trip to South Africa. You are a high-paid professional. You've lived in the US for 20 years. You are in your thirties, you have a wife a little boy and another baby on the way. One thing, even though you have a green card, you are still Egyptian. On transit you are asked to come with 2 security guards, next thing you know you are overpowered, hooded and chained and after a brief ( but still reasonably civil) interrogation you are to be rendered! This is what happens to Anwar el Ibrahimi at the beginning of the movie. His is a story of pain and ( literally )torture. It's one of several story lines. One follows his wife's attempts to get more information. One follows the (cold) bureaucrats behind the rendition. Another story deals with the family of the man who leads the interrogation of Anwar el Ibrahimi. There are some other stories too and by the end they all neatly come together. Though the more famous actors like Reese Witherspoon ( as the distraught pregnant wife ) Jake Gyllenhaal ( as the CIA rookie forced to watch the interrogation in Northern Africa) and Meryl Streep ( as CIA hotshot Corine Whitman) it is really the more unknown actors that carry the story and give it it's heart. For me the actor playing the unfortunate Mr El Ibrahimi ( Omar Metwally ) was the heart and soul of this movie. His portrayal of a man in distress was shockingly well done. It's almost as if he was being tortured for real! Also Israeli actor Yigal Naor was very impressive as the part worried family-man and part extremely cruel chief of torture. Hard to watch and not exactly fun, but still very worthwhile.

Rendition presents a very topical matter in the form of a very tense thriller. It's a gripping, and not a preaching, movie. Seeing it in an Arab country with a mixture of Arabian and European audience gave it an extra level of atmosphere. The audience was totally gripped by the film and gave it a loud applause afterwards. The story of an Egyptian, married to an American, picked up on the suspicion of links to terrorist organizations and shipped to a friendly (with US) Arab country for "enhanced interrogation (as Meryl Streep's character states in the film: "we have no torture in the US") seems to be from the front page of todays news. There is a very neat link between the various characters which appear in the movie and the pace of the film never drops. The movies'message seems to be (as stated by Jake Gyllenhal's character in the film) that by abducting and torturing suspects you create many more terrorists. The acting is uniformly excellent with Streep and Reese Witherspoon the stand outs. Not to be missed.