Rendition

Director Gavin Hood’s first film since the Oscar-winning Tsotsi, Rendition casts Reese Witherspoon as an American whose Arab husband is detained by the United States government for allegedly assisting terrorists. The film follows her efforts to get him back and also revolves around several other characters as they deal with the ramifications of a deadly attack, with a Senator’s assistant (Peter Sarsgaard’s Alan Smith), a shady official (Meryl Streep’s Corrine Whitman), and a rookie CIA analyst (Jake Gyllenhaal’s Douglas Freeman) all getting involved. Screenwriter Kelley Sane generally does an effective job of balancing the various characters and their respective storylines, though there’s certainly no denying that some of these subplots are far more interesting than others (ie there’s a seemingly pointless digression concerning an illicit relationship between two young Arabs, the relevance of which isn’t made clear until the film’s final moments). It’s not until the pieces finally start to fall into place that Rendition becomes the hard-hitting, thought-provoking drama Hood clearly wants it to be (which, given the filmmaker’s propensity for glossy visuals, is certainly no small feat), although there are admittedly a number of individually compelling moments along the way (eg an electrifying encounter between Streep and Sarsgaard’s respective characters).

*** out of ****