A mediocre movie about an important topic
Added 11/2/2009
Extraordinary rendition as a tool in the war on terror and its implications for due process and the rule of law, the issue of torture, and the fundamental problem of individual rights versus public safety are all serious and important topics that deserve a better treatment than this movie. Actually, the brief documentary about rendition cases which accompanies the movie on the DVD does a much better job than the movie itself in addressing these issues.
The cast represents considerable talent, and the acting is just fine. The problem is with the writing. This would've been a much better movie if it had focused on the rendition case itself; instead, that almost becomes a sideshow in the drama of the subplot involving the interrogator's daughter and her boyfriend. It is understandable that the writer felt the necessity to include a real terrorist plot alongside the extraordinary rendition and torture in order not to be accused of being completely one-sided, but this dilutes the impact of the rendition story. And in the end, the rendition plot is "solved" in a very unsophisticated manner. So while being mildly entertaining, this film was a disappointment overall.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
interesting but leaves an open end
Added 9/24/2009
I film was interesting, but one thing that was never answered is
if the phone calls were made to Ibrahimi's cell then what?
They traced him by looking at the terrorist's phone records. Are we to believe
then that it was somebody's cell phone other than Ibrahimi's?
That is the only part that made no sense.
I also was not impressed by 'Douglas'. He was too wishy washy IMO.
Granted he was a bean counter but............
Basically, it says once again that in war, whether combat or
covert, nobody wins.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Message Movie
Added 6/11/2009
Quite a good message movie.
The message, quite clearly, is: When you torture (suspected) terrorists, you become a terrorist yourself, and perpetuate the vicious cycle.
This happens to the police official. While torturing the (presumably) innocent Egyptian/American, he also rounds up and tortures the brother of Khalid, which pushes Khalid into suicide-bombing--and that kills Khalid's girlfriend, the police official's daughter.
The CIA officer (Jake Gyllenhaal) sums it up: When you torture (and often kill) one terrorist, you create hundreds more.
The goal of terrorists is to make you act as badly as they say you do. When you do, you prove their point and swell their numbers.
A secondary message: besides being immoral and counterproductive, torture produces no useful info.
Good acting, interesting editing, wonderful photography, a lot of intensity and suitable horror.
Good film.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
|
Terrible!
Added 5/29/2009
Pitiful left-wing Hollywood propaganda film that ignores the harsh reality of the ongoing terrorist jihad against the West and especially against the United States.
3 out of 9 people found this helpful.
|
A Picture You Won't Want to Miss and Won't Want to Watch
Added 5/28/2009
"Rendition" is two stories that converge at the climax. The first is of a legal alien, chemical engineer, married to an American citizen. The second is a police official from a North African nation who's independent-minded daughter has not been home for seven days. He wants her to return and prepare for the marriage he has arranged.
Anwar El-Ibrahimi, played by Omar Metwally is abducted as he lands in Washington D. C. where his name is erased from the passenger manifest. He is hooded, isolated, questioned, and not allowed to make contact with anyone. The order to have him abducted has already been given by a government official, Corrine Whitman who is played by Meryl Streep. She plays the part of an arrogant, calculating, you-know-what. As a government director she is confident, and wields her power without remorse.
Reese Witherspoon is the wife of Anwar El-Ibrahimi. While the airline denies that he is a passenger, she discovers that he was checked in on the flight from Johannesburg, and used his credit card for duty-free purchases on the flight home, but there is no husband at arrivals.
The decision is made to take Ibrahimi to an unnamed North African nation for rendition. Here we get to see how he is stripped, racked, confined, shackled, and water boarded. A C.I.A. analyst (Jake Gyllenhaall) watches as he is the default person in place, after a public square explosion hours earlier killed his colleague. The bomb was the second attempt on the official's life.
This story is not about anyone in particular, but it does bear a resemblance to the Canadian citizen who was abducted by Americans with the complicity of the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who eventually resigned in disgrace. This also represents what has been going on here in the land of the free, and this is the most frightening part for me as I am a life-long believer that Americans would never tolerate such a policy but would rebel against it. The story spells out clearly that rendition was started in the Clinton administration in one of his bids to move more to the center or right to please conservatives who would never accept him anyway. The movie also makes clear that 9/11 especially in the hands of a President who believed he could do no wrong or a Vice President who didn't care if he did or didn't, would use rendition so often.
Without telling you the remainder of the storyline, the one thing "Rendition" lacked for me was suspense. Only one part of the ending came as a surprise, and I have already alluded to that two times in this review. Part of the end was farfetched and divorced from reality, even if it did somewhat satisfy my sense of justice and retribution. The cast and casting were superb, but the music, unfortunately sounded like it was borrowed from "Gladiator" and "Troy." It must be a very popular style lately.
The DVD also includes special features. These are "Outlawed" documentary which is excellent for only twenty plus minutes, "Intersections: the Making of Rendition" Documentary, five deleted scenes including an alternate ending, and director commentary.
After World War II, the American army forced the local German civilians to view the corpses in over 100 death camps they "never knew" existed. The purpose was to ensure that the Germans could never deny what happened. Seventy years later, it is time for Americans to do the same by watching this picture as a start to learn all about the torture we have committed and caused in the name of security or even freedom, while claiming to be a nation governed by the rule of law.
You won't want to miss this, but you won't want to watch it either.
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
|
Fantastic movie!
Added 9/9/2009
This is an awesome movie that really makes you think about what is really happening with the war, politics and the media behind it all.
0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
|
Rent it. Buy it.
Added 7/20/2009
This film asks the question, "What do you stand for?" with such eloquence, you don't even realize your fundamental values are being challenged. This film, directed by Robert Redford, draws you into many of the central issues of America's war on terror. You will find yourself rooting for everyone to do the right thing. What is that? How is "the right thing" defined? Watch the film and think about what you stand for. It's a brilliant piece of work and I recommend it.
Lions For Lambs (Widescreen Edition)
Lions For Lambs (Full Screen Edition)
Lions for Lambs [Blu-ray]
1 out of 3 people found this helpful.
|
This filmhas become a Prophecy
Added 7/12/2009
This is one of the strangest film we can imagine about the end of Dubya's war on terror, alas not the end of the war per se. It is all centered on Afghanistan but it is essentially conveyed in the paranoid fear of human beings. Like the Christian God, this story is based on three characters, three story tellers, three episodes that overlap and crisscross from one to the other constantly. On one side a university professor who was drafted into the Vietnam war and has not yet really understood what happened then. He has negotiated a hypocritical peace with life that makes him take his anger and frustration onto the students themselves in order to confront them to decision making at any time in their life as students when this life has become boring and senseless. They know it is not going to be better than their parent's though the latter have promised them it would. And anyway, and that is what these students have forgotten, it cannot be the same, let alone better because they are just starting in life and nothing in life is given ready made and ready to eat. You have to fight for it, like it or not, and that the dear professor has forgotten it in his own mind, even if the students have forgotten it in their real life. The professor makes the students fight but for the sake of it not for any commitment, even purely selfish. The professor does not do his job since he does not teach them how to start from zero, as life requires it for 95% of people, and then have an objective other than satisfying the wants, desires or phantasms of the professor. He is not even a signpost along the road that never follows the road it is indicating, but he is a signpost in the middle of the desert pointing in any erratic direction according to the moment and the professor's impulses. The journalist in a big newspaper is confronted with the necessity, or even the duty, to tell the public that everyone is lying to them and they believe them. But she runs out of steam to convince other people, out of steam to really corner the senator who receives her, out of steam to convince her own boss about that necessity instead of treating everything as news when it is only propaganda. She too is sort of out of phase and she will either yield or retire. She is incapable of doing her job for her boss who takes the assignment away, her job being to bring news to the public. But she is also incapable to do what she thinks her job is, that is to say bring people to reflecting and having a wider vision on things, a vision that could integrate the past into the future and vice versa, in other words be responsible and visionary. The senator is a young wolf who is ready to win the war whatever the cost it may take because that's what politicians need, a win. Instead of drawing the conclusion from the failure that the mistakes are too heavy for life to forgive and forget them and that politicians have to stop these mistakes, they want more war and they look for the person who is going to be able to carry the message to the people and make people swallow the hard medicine instead of changing it altogether. In that trilogy - or should I say trinity? - of lost grown-ups, the film shows a few young students and how they react to this fake life, and it is not at all encouraging. These students are lost. Whether they want to commit themselves and their life to the big battle against terrorism but they are betrayed by a bunch of incompetent officers and politicians who will announce their death as a victory. Or they want to stay out of it and enjoy life and that makes them drop-outs for one and flunkies for two. No hope there, hence a deep sense of despair. The dice have been cast and no one can decipher the message written among the dots and figures. Two years later what can we think about it? It will take a lot of energy - and hope - on the side of politicians to change their ways. It will take a lot of energy for the people to understand enjoying life cannot be the objective of life itself. It will take a lot of energy for the media to understand that their job is not to transmit the press releases of politicians but to educate and enlighten the public into thinking with their own heads. It will take a lot of energy, though I am afraid this battle is far from even having begun, for professors and teachers, educators and intellectuals to get down into the world and commit themselves to real life, which would mean more work and less ease for them, the poor darlings, my heart is bleeding for them. To defend their privileges, these professors and company are ready to break the life of their students as students and then as grown-ups and even as citizens, and they will argue that the students agree. There is always one rotten apple in a barrel of apples, as old seafarers well know.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
0 out of 4 people found this helpful.
|
