Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard and Alan Arkin star in Rendition, a thriller from director Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi"). Witherspoon stars as the American wife of an Egyptian-born chemical engineer who disappears on a flight from South Africa to Washington. The woman desperately tries to track her husband down, while a CIA analyst (Gyllenhaal) at a secret detention facility outside the U.S. is forced to question his assignment as he becomes party to the man's unorthodox interrogation.
This movie was an awesome political drama. I thought that it captured the government perfectly with how some lady sitting behind a desk can decide in the blink of an eye to have someone extradited to a different country because they think he might have some kind of information. The only thing that held this movie back from being a four star movie was the . . . . . . . SPOILER ALERT . . . . . . . fluffy happy ending. The husband ends up getting reunited with his family. Now, let's be serious for a moment. The guy gets an accidental cell phone call from a terrorist that the government is monitoring. The government picks the guy up from the airport and transports him to some prison in North Africa. They torture him endlessly for god knows how long. A CIA agent witnessing the interrogation feels its too much, frees him, and sends him home. COME ON NOW!!! You are telling me that the government would ever let this guy go!?! They would let someone exist with the knowledge of what they did!?! That's just plain silly. As cruel as it sounds to say - this movie would have been so much more legit if the guy would have gotten killed to cover it up or something. The sappy ending took away a lot for me and this movie would have been phenomenal without it.
Even with the sappy ending, the movie is still very enjoyable. The validity of it is kind of questionable, but it was a good political drama anywho. I would recommend people checking this out. It's worth the price of admission.
