A terrorist bombing in Northern Africa consequently kills 19 people, including a single American, this leads to an Egyptian chemical engineer named Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) being arrested and detained upon arriving back to the United States after a work trip to South Africa. Upon his arrest, his wife begins working to try and uncover what has truly happened to her husband, and why. A release that dates back to 2007 but still provides some form of entertainment value. Rendition is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Director: Gavin Hood
Writers: Kelley Sane
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Maryl Streep
Rendition is based on the true story of Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen who was mistaken for a terrorist of a similar name, rumoured to have been involved in the infamous September 11 terror attacks. The German was arrested and taken to what some call a “black” site in Afghanistan where he was interrogated, beaten and sexually abused for months. It must be noted that the filmmakers opted against referencing any country within this flick, mainly to avoid offending any countries on the African continent that did not want their status assigned to this form of practice.
In regards to the filming, however, a large majority of this was done on location in Morocco and the flick certainly had an authentic African feel, along with a fitting soundtrack, with records such as Siasi by Salah Edin and N’Dare by Alpha Yaya Diallo being used. For that reason alone, this may be worth giving a shot.
With that being said, there were some issues with Rendition, those primarily being the pacing of the story and any subplots, along with the general background of the characters of display. Some would argue that the flick was slow in nature, while others would state that there were too many main characters to keep track of, meaning screen-time was limited for most, with little to no character background being translated onto the big screen.
It would be difficult to bill anybody as the lead character through Rendition, but Jake Gyllenhall starred as Douglas Freeman, while Reese Witherspoon portrayed Isabella Fields El-Ibrahimi. The pair speadheaded multiple scenes, but other noteworthy appearances included Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin and Omar Metwally, who appeared as Corrine Whitman, Alan Smith, Senator Hawkins and Anwar El-Ibrahimi, respectively.
While the filmmakers manage to successfully bring an important true story to the life of the big screen, it doesn’t quite provide the satisfaction that some would have hoped. There were slow moments throughout and unfortunately there were more questions than answers when the credits rolled around. As previously noted, Rendition is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
“This is my first torture…”
Douglas Freeman – Rendition
The DC Review Blog - EST. 2020 