A poorly paced movie, starring Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhall and Meryl Streep, this film is a debate on the topic of torture. Rendition is great at presenting both viewpoints, but fails at telling us an engaging story.

This movie is confusing at times, making the viewer wonder why so many separate stories are being told. Movie like this can be intriguing taking a large number of stories and showing us by the movie’s end how they all relate, but this one never really connects the stories together smoothly. The editing is part of the problem, but it seems the direction may be too. This could have been a political action thriller like The Kingdom, but instead becomes a somewhat preachy movie like John Q.

All of the actors do respectable jobs, especially Gyllenhall, who is a CIA analyst forced into the role of being a CIA director responsible for helping detain a possible Egyptian terrorist (who happens to be the husband of Reese Witherspoon’s character). He plays it like he has no clue what he is doing and why he is doing it, and places emotion and beliefs in front of doing his job, which gives makes the viewer wonder if torture is appropriate to possible terrorists. The leaders of the government in this film seem to think so, but when Gyllenhall’s character has to decide, he wrestles with what is right and what is wrong.

At least the movie shows both sides of the issue without being biased, but it is too bad that the story becomes too confusing and loses the viewer halfway through. This is an adequate movie, but with a better director, editor, and screenwriter could have become more like The Kingdom. At least, that is my rendition of the movie.

Similar recommended titles: The Constant Gardener and The Kingdom