1. What finally gives Rendition its headlong narrative momentum is the sense that we're rarely certain what argument the filmmakers are endorsing.
2. Toss in a bunch of one-dimensional characters, a major flashback that isn't triggered by a memory or a theme but simply by the convenience of the plot and an ending that makes absolutely no sense, and you end with a big, fat mess.
3. A movie that has only two major scenes for Streep and one for Arkin has talent to spare.
4. That it's embarrassingly plausible, that it depicts things that have happened and that are probably still happening, is enough to make Americans sick to their stomach.
5. A political potboiler guaranteed to get your heart racing. It pushes all the buttons these kinds of suspenseful dramas usually do.
6. Rendition's approach feels additionally preachy and one-noted because its message is bigger than both the story and the human element.
7. If these new, allegedly topical movies are to make us feel anything -- to move us toward any action or even just toward any fresh realization -- they need to at least seem alive on the screen, instead of just courting our polite, measured applause.
8. While Rendition does show terrible torture, it doesn't quite rethink the cultural context, the conditions that produce such monsters, again and again.
9. I have no qualms with any of the performances, or with the film's individual components. It's the overall effect that's lackluster. This is a film that's good and decent, but not as deep it wants to be.
10. Although South African director Gavin Hood gave us the searing, Oscar-winning foreign film Tsotsi, he may not yet have enough experience to handle something on a grander scale.

What is a brief summary of the following reviews?
The impressive cast cannot rescue Rendition, which explores complex issues in woefully simplified terms.