Just Seen: Rendition

What an unpleasant choice of a topic for a movie! Unpleasant, yet very important. As with every Hollywood movie, an important political topic is illustrated by exploring it through the prism of personal problems and dilemmas (and yes, these are two different things). Rendition, torture,

Since I just came from Egypt, I was listening especially carefully to the Arabic spoken by the characters, and I was very happy to have recognized "Enta masri?" - "Are you Egyptian?".

An Egyptian in America, speaking accent-free American, looking as good as any other "american", gets "rendered" to Egypt, the homeland. Now, I understand the need to make it slightly complicated by rendering the character as "unEgyptian" as possible. Obviously, the character with an accent and alien looks would not have solicited the same emotional response and the same willingness to be accepted as the good guy.

if you don't care about learning an element of a plot, click here

It would have been much more interesting, if torturing they "good guy" produced intel. This way it would have placed the CIA liaison guy into a much more dubious moral position, and made the tale more complicated and less straightforward.

Still, the presence of Meryl Streep, Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon makes this movie a "worth seeing" one.