According to Wikipedia, the CIA has been using the procedure known as “extraordinary rendition” ever since the 9/11 attacks in New York. The term refers to the way the CIA can arrest someone suspected of being a terrorist or of having ties to terrorists, and transfer that person to a different country for interrogation. There’s no due process, no lawyers are involved, of course, and no legal rights are granted. Purportedly, the U.S. likes to transfer prisoners to countries where torture can be used during the interrogation.

It’s a scary concept for sure, and one that provides the basic subject matter for the 2007 Gavin Hood film Rendition.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Egyptian-born businessman Anwar El-Ibrahimi (played by Omar Metwally) has been living in the United States on a green card for the past 14 years. He and his American wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) live in Chicago with their son Jeremy (Aramis Knight), and have another baby on the way.

Their lives get turned upside down when Anwar is apprehended at Dulles International Airport on his way back to Chicago from a business trip to South Africa. There has been a suicide bombing in the Middle East that killed several people, including a CIA agent. The person believed to be responsible for the attack allegedly made several calls to Anwar’s cell phone, so that’s why the CIA has taken him into custody. Anwar is questioned for a bit at the airport, but when he reveals nothing (since he doesn’t know what’s going on), he is transferred to the Middle East.

Isabella panics once Anwar doesn’t show up in Chicago. She does some investigating on her own, and discovers that Anwar was definitely on that flight from South Africa to Washington: He bought some duty-free items on the plane using his credit card. Isabella decides to go to an old college friend for help since that friend is now a Sentaor’s aide.

Meanwhile, Anwar is interrogated and tortured by a man named Abasi (Yigal Naor) as junior CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) looks on. Abasi is ruthless in his methods, and eventually Anwar admits to having contact with the terrorist. Freeman suspects that Anwar is just saying that in order to stop the torture, but Abasi won’t listen to him.

The rest of the film shows Freeman’s struggles to come to terms with what he’s seeing and participating in, as well as Isabella’s efforts to find answers despite stonewalling from high-ranking government officials. In addition, there’s a subplot about Abasi’s daughter’s involvement with a militant student, and the consequences of their actions.

My Reaction: I had high hopes for Rendition, particularly given the fact that the cast included the likes of Witherspoon, Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, and J.K. Simmons. But despite having some great material to work with, the filmmakers couldn’t quite pull off a compelling product.

First, I want to say that the Khalid/Fatima storyline felt like a big waste of time to me. What was the point of that whole thing? Just to demonstrate how ironic it was that Abasi’s daughter got mixed up in a plot to kill him? I didn’t get it, and those scenes slowed the film down to a crawl. I found myself sighing, rolling my eyes, and shifting around on my couch whenever the “action” switched to Khalid and Fatima.

I also didn’t understand the need for the time differences in the scenes. Why was the Khalid/Fatima story presented as a flashback while everything else presumably occurred in a more linear fashion? Again, this just seemed completely unnecessary, and detracted from, rather than added to, the movie as a whole.

One more question: who (or what) was Abasi? Was he the head of an intelligence agency? Was he a government official for that country? Was this ever explained? If it was, I totally missed it, so I was sitting there the whole time wondering why he was such a big target of these terrorists.

As for Anwar — well, I can’t say that he elicited much sympathy from me. Sure, I felt a bit sorry for him in a general way; but I think the film would have been so much more effective if more time had been spent on developing this character before he was arrested. As it was, I didn’t have anything emotionally invested in him, so I didn’t particularly care if he survived or not (as bad as that sounds).

With a few changes, I think Rendition could have been an intense, engrossing film. Unfortunately, the final cut ended up being merely average, which is why I’m giving it 3 stars out of 5.