Rendition Review

Everything here arrives already knowing what it wants you to conclude. Gavin Hood, fresh from Tsotsi, pushes a chemical engineer through a black site while the film cuts to his wife working the phones in Washington, and the case gets argued in speeches rather than built in scenes. Reese Witherspoon is stranded in corridors with nothing to play but worry.

Jake Gyllenhaal's analyst watches a man drowned and beaten, drinks about it, and then reverses his entire position on a timetable the script never earns. Meryl Streep is enjoyable precisely because she refuses to soften, and Igal Naor, as an interrogator with a daughter of his own, is the one character allowed contradictions.

Dion Beebe's photography is the strongest element, all sodium light and heat haze, and it flatters material that has not earned the atmosphere. The single real formal idea is the reveal that the North African strand has been running ahead of the rest of the story, which recontextualizes a death and reframes a bombing. It is a clever card, played far too late to redeem two hours of characters reciting positions at each other across tables.