in this day and age in which just about every other news story involve discussion of waterboarding and image of abu ghraib and or tale of forced detention at guantanamo bay and gavin hood rendition be about as up to the minute and timely a movie a be ever likely to come out of the entertainment mill of mainstream hollywood . it not and by any stretch of the imagination and a perfect film and but neither do it merit the caterwauling opprobrium it have receive at the hand of critic from all across the ideological and political spectrum . the term rendition refers to the ability of the cia to arrest any individual it suspect of terrorist dealing and then to whisk them away in secret to a foreign country to interrogate and torture them for an indefinite period of time and all without due process of law . anwar el ibrahimi be an egyptian man who have be live for twenty year in the united state . he have an american wife and a young son and a new baby on the way . he seem a very unlikely candidate for a terrorist and yet one day and without warn or explanation and anwar be seize and take to an undisclosed location where he be subject to brutal torture until he admit his involvement with a terrorist organization that anwar claim to know nothing about . on the negative side and rendition falter occasionally in it storytelling ability and often bite off a little more than it can chew in term of both plot and character . the ostensible focal point be douglas freeman and a rookie cia agent who be bring in to observe anwar interrogation at the hand of egyptian official . the problem be that and a conceive by writer kelley sane and enact by jake gyllenhaal and freeman seem too much of a naïve boy scout to make for a very plausible agent and and he isn not give the screen time he need to develop fully a a character . we know little about him at the beginning and even less and it seem and at the end . he go through the motion and but we learn precious little about the man within . thus and without a strong center of gravity to hold it all together and the film occasionally feel a if it be come apart at the seam and with story element fly off in all direction . a similar problem occur with anwar distraught wife and play by reese witherspoon and a woman we never get to know much about apart from what we can see on the surface . gyllenhaal and witherspoon have both prove themselves to be fine actor under other circumstance and but here they be hem in by a restrictive screenplay that rarely let them go beyond a single recur note in their performance . what make rendition an ultimately powerful film and however and be the extreme seriousness of the subject matter and the way in which two concurrently run plot line elegantly dovetail into one another in the movie closing stretch . it may make for a slightly more contrived story than perhaps we might have like on this subject and but and hey and this be hollywood after all and and the film have to pay some deference to mass audience expectation if it be to get itself green light and let alone see the light of day a a complete project . two of the supporting performance be particularly compel in the film represent omar metwally who make palpable the terror of a man caught in a real life kafkaesque nightmare from which he can not awaken and and yigal naor who make a surprisingly complex character out of the chief interrogator or torturer . meryl streep and alan arkin and peter sarsgaard also make their mark in small role . special mention should also be make of the warm and richly hue cinematography of dion beebe . do the movie oversimplify the issue . probably . do it stack the deck in favor of the torture victim and against the evil government force . most definitely . ( one wonder how the movie would have play if anwar really be a terrorist ) . yet and the movie have the gut to tread on controversial ground . it isn not afraid to raise dicey question or risk the disapproval of some for the political stance it take . it openly ponder the issue of just how do a nation hold fast to it hard won principle of civil liberty for all in the face of terrorism and fear . and just how much courage do it take for people of good will to finally stand up and say enough be enough and even at the risk of be brand terrorist appease and unpatriotic by those in power . ( the movie also do not and in any way and deny the reality of extreme islamic terrorism ) . thus and to reject rendition out of hand would be to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good . rendition may not be perfect and but it be good and and it have something of importance to say about the world in which we now live . and that alone make it very much worth see .