Gavin Hood's follow-up directorial effort to the Academy Award-winning Tsotsi is all too reminiscent of the post-Oscar pitfalls often found in Hollywood. Hood's most recent effort, Rendition, boasts an incredible cast but lacks a passionate script.
In the film, an Egyptian terrorist suspect (Omar Metwally) is secretly transferred outside the U.S and detained (read: tortured) while his American wife (Reese Witherspoon) wrestles to find out why her husband hasn't come home. Meanwhile a CIA agent (Jake Gyllenhaal), overseeing his first foreign detainment, fights an internal battle with his morality.
While there are elements of Amores Perros here, this would-be thriller is soulless and fails to properly engage. The A-list cast is unable to show any real depth, having to overcome a script with little character development and heavy stereotypes. Hood's direction seems unaware of where the center of the story actually lies, instead shifting away from Witherspoon and Gyllenhaal's characters toward a rebellious daughter and her father who runs the foreign detainment center.
The saving grace of Rendition is the appearance of Peter Sarsgaard as a DC insider - and champion for Witherspoon's cause - and the incomparable Meryl Streep as the CIA manager who gives the detainment the go-ahead. But even these two pros can't save what is, unfortunately, a very mediocre film with pretty cinematography.
