There's an old insult in wrestling where you claim a guy has a 'million dollar body, but a ten cent brain'. Well if I may paraphrase that insult, Rendition is a movie with a million dollar cast and a ten cent story. It seemed to be in trendy in 2007 for moviegoers to ignore war films at the box office, but even I was surprised to see this one do so poorly given the pedigree of the cast. Now that I've seen it I can see why.
The movie is about an Egyptian man who is taken by the U.S. government and tortured under rendition because they believe he is connected with a terrorist act that took place in North Africa. Reese Witherspoon plays the wife trying to figure out what has happened to her terrorist. The film also boasts a cast that includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin, and J.K. Simmons. Within about 10 minutes of the film, I basically could figure everything that would happen. And I'm not talking about simply guessing that the government is wrong about this guy, I'm talking knowing how each of the subplots would play out. About the only thing that threw me for a loop was a illogical 'twist' near the end of the film that made no sense from a narrative perspective. The movie then ends with a thud as we get a schmaltzy ending that provides no closure whatsoever. You could argue that the conclusion is ambiguous because the director wants the audience to make their own judgments on the events they've just seen, but that would be giving the director too much credit. To me, the ending is just cowardice as they were too afraid to take a direction on anything they presented in the film. I should give this film only one star, but I'll be kind because the quality actors in the film still provide good performances, despite the lousy material they have to work with. Netflix rating: **
No comments:
Post a Comment