Rendition: Film tackles important subject but lacks passion

Who turned out Reese's inner light?

In "Rendition," Reese Witherspoon plays Isabella, the lifeless, unsmiling American wife of a green card-holding Egyptian engineer who fails to show up at the airport on his way back from the Republic of South Africa. After a terrorist bombing happens in North Africa, her husband, Anwar (played convincingly by Omar Metwally), is plucked off his flight and briskly hooded, imprisoned and tortured without charge.

The term "rendition" brings to mind fat rendering, or maybe a style of singing, but extraordinary rendition" in this case is something more sinister than either. Although not officially acknowledged by any government, the practice involves the snatching of people from one country and their transfer to another country for interrogation, or perhaps torture. All of this occurs outside the visible judicial process.

This is the starting point from which the film "Rendition" departs, providing a horrifying picture of what can happen when such a program is allowed to operate freely. With the outside eye of South African Gavin Hood as its director, this film makes a strong statement about terrorism, torture and the price paid by individuals and families when world conflict engulfs them.

"Rendition" maintains a certain emotional distance, allowing us to observe the horror that is unfolding without excessive melodrama or sentimentality; however, there are several intensely emotional scenes including a confrontation between Isabella and the CIA overseer of the rendition program (played viciously by Meryl Streep). Isabella screams while Streep's character's compassion has the temperature of refrigerated steel. Anwar screams when he is tortured, and I must admit to closing my eyes a few times.

"Rendition" has a consistently authentic feel to it, as the film has unmistakable echoes of Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar's case. A gum-chewing CIA field man Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal, giving another low-wattage performance) who was almost killed in the bombing, interrogates Anwar while, back home, Isabella (Witherspoon) goes to an ex-boyfriend (Peter Sarsgaard) who works for a senator (Alan Arkin) to find answers. All of this is somehow linked to Fatima, a beautiful young Egyptian girl who runs away with her would-be Muslim extremist boyfriend.

Having been conscripted to replace the "knuckle dragger" agent murdered by a terrorist bomb, Freeman must act as a silent adviser to the Egyptian interrogator (the marvelously imposing actor Igor Naor), as the latter who is father to Fatima indulges any means necessary to extract the prisoner's confession. His conscience strained by what he's seeing, Freeman blurts the word "torture" to the top-level CIA officer (Streep) when queried about the progress he's making. Tersely informed that "the United States government does not practice torture," Freeman is ordered back into the dungeon to get results.

Shifting constantly between images of El-Ibrahim in prison, Isabella working at home to find out what has happened to him, and Fatima, the young woman struggling to make sense of her own life in North Africa, "Rendition" is a fast-moving, tense and troubling film. Scenes are cleverly juxtaposed in a loop, and the themes of forbidden love, morality struggles and new birth come together with a clever twist that left me genuinely surprised.

Either way, though, "Rendition" is morose instead of outraged and static instead of penetrating. It has a giant hole in its plot and a big question remains unanswered at the end. Streep and Witherspoon both seem somehow ill at ease with their roles, and somehow tamped down. It would be interesting to know whether the director asked these two magnificent actors, whom I have loved in almost any other role, to take it down a notch for this movie. Still, it is a film that will be remembered.