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GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 10/18/07)

Here's how it goes in the new era of the socially conscious film: Rendition is a picture that believes its audience is smart enough to put together the fact that one of its several parallel storylines is actually contiguous rather than parallel with the others, but dumb enough to buy the notion that there's an actual country named "North Africa" on the continent of Africa.

The featured headline on the front of Interview magazine, whose cover stars Rendition's Gyllenhaal, sums up this film's real aspirations better than I ever could: "The Hottest Bachelor in America Shines a Light on the CIA." Indeed. Here Gyllenhaal plays a character that every liberal audience member imagined by Rendition's filmmakers dearly wishes, and perhaps even secretly believes, exists: the CIA agent of conscience who, understanding a grave injustice is being done, will perhaps risk life and limb and even job to right that wrong. The wrong is being done to a blameless Arab scholar (Metwally), who's subjected to "extraordinary" rendition after some shady cellphone calls tie him to a terrorist who's responsible for a suicide bombing in the mythical land of North Africa. Too bad for the American bad guys that the Arab scholar is married to Elle Woods — I mean a character played by Reese Witherspoon, who gets to furiously enact Not Without My Husband. While pregnant, yet. No, subtlety is not one of this picture's strong suits, although I imagine its makers would argue that now is not the time for subtlety. They're entitled to their opinion, I guess.

The scenes featuring Meryl Streep as an Agency dragon lady (a wicked Karen Hughes impersonation, a friend pointed out) parrying with the likes of Peter Sarsgaard's on-the-side-of-the-angels-until-it-threatens-his-job Senate aide are good enough to almost evoke Advise and Consent. But there aren't nearly enough of such scenes to save the film from the self-righteous morass in which it wills itself to sink. Paul Hepker and Mark Killian's overstated score, with instrumentation redolent of, er, "North Africa," is also reasonably irritating. "LEFTIST propaganda" reads a header on a recent IMDB message-board post for this movie, written, of course, by someone who hasn't seen it. If it makes anybody feel better, one character in the picture does point out that the whole "extraordinary rendition" concept originated with Clinton. So there's balance for you.

— Glenn Kenny