Oscar winners Reese Witherspoon and director Gavin Hood, together with Hollywood heartthrob and Oscar nominee Jake Gyllenhaal braved the sudden bitingly cold weather in Rome last night, to sign autographs along the red carpet outside the Auditorium as they arrived at the première of Rendition. Lucky enough to have tickets for the film I was more then happy to watch their arrival on the big screen inside the theatre and leave the shivering to the dedicated die-hard fans!
So to the film - Rendition is a post 9/11 political thriller which illustrates one fictional personal story (as opposed to allegedly thousands of real life stories) of an Egyptian chemical engineer (played by Omar Metwally), resident in The US for most of his life and married to Isabella (Witherspoon), who after a terrorist attack in an unnamed north African country in which a CIA agent is incidentally killed, finds himself under suspicion and is 'disappeared' to a secret detention centre outside the US under the dubious legislative powers the US Government euphemistically calls 'extraordinary rendition'. To say very much more about the plot would risk divulging spoilers galore, so I'll limit myself to saying that I very much enjoyed this intelligent and engaging movie. Gavin Hood directs a stunning cast; because of the various locations in the film some of the stars share very little, if any, screen time together and yet the whole effect is that of a closely knit ensemble piece with every actor's contribution, however small, fitting perfectly into the whole. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of scenes during the phone conversation between CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Gyllenhaal) who leaves a casbah and steps out onto a balcony above a chaotic north African street scene to take a call from anti-terrorism boss Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) in her pristine, white and perfectly ordered kitchen back in the US. Kelley Sane, as screen writer, has also produced a very tight and clever script - a message film, without being preachy, this is one to see.
So to the film - Rendition is a post 9/11 political thriller which illustrates one fictional personal story (as opposed to allegedly thousands of real life stories) of an Egyptian chemical engineer (played by Omar Metwally), resident in The US for most of his life and married to Isabella (Witherspoon), who after a terrorist attack in an unnamed north African country in which a CIA agent is incidentally killed, finds himself under suspicion and is 'disappeared' to a secret detention centre outside the US under the dubious legislative powers the US Government euphemistically calls 'extraordinary rendition'. To say very much more about the plot would risk divulging spoilers galore, so I'll limit myself to saying that I very much enjoyed this intelligent and engaging movie. Gavin Hood directs a stunning cast; because of the various locations in the film some of the stars share very little, if any, screen time together and yet the whole effect is that of a closely knit ensemble piece with every actor's contribution, however small, fitting perfectly into the whole. I particularly liked the juxtaposition of scenes during the phone conversation between CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Gyllenhaal) who leaves a casbah and steps out onto a balcony above a chaotic north African street scene to take a call from anti-terrorism boss Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) in her pristine, white and perfectly ordered kitchen back in the US. Kelley Sane, as screen writer, has also produced a very tight and clever script - a message film, without being preachy, this is one to see.
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