Richard Whalen

The New York Times film critic, A. O. Scott in his article A War on Every Screen asks: "Do I really need to see this?" …. and makes the obvious point that "people go to the movies to escape the problems of the world rather than to confront them."

Rendition includes a cast led by Meryl Streep and Reese Witherspoon and tells the story of an Egyptian-born U.S. green card holder from Chicago named Anwar El-Ibrahimi whose cell phone mistakenly receives calls from an international terrorist. Omar Metwally plays the innocent detainee and gives a haunting performance. NSA signal-intel flags him; CIA-FBI arrests him on his return from a business trip to South Africa, erasing his name on the European flight manifest. He vanishes.

The villainous CIA boss lady played by Meryl Streep okays his secret "rendition" to Egypt where he is stripped naked and tortured. At the same time, she lecturers a young Senate aide trying to help his onetime college friend on the strategic justification and moral defensibility of illegal secret government kidnapping, prisons and brutal interrogation methods. She rejects torture, declaring almost verbatim the real-world Bush Administration line: "The United States does not torture." Another CIA "observer" with a conscience, Douglas Freeman played by Jake Gyllenhaal watches, and convinced by the victim’s denials, finally springs him and sends him home.

Yes, we are forced to admit the U.S. does torture, lie and commit every crime in the dirty tricks book in order to keep Americans and friendly foreigners safe from terrorists’ bombs all in the name of national security.

The U.S. once led the fight against torture and not only signed, but helped craft many of the international treaties and laws that outlaw torture, the ACLU reminds us. But since 9/11, Congress has belatedly admitted the secret and selective suspension of the rule of law and the writ of habeas corpus in the name of national security. Now, our current administration directs the NSA, FBI, CIA and thirteen other so-called intelligence agencies to encourage such brutal strong-arm methods, some argue to compensate for our nation’s near-total lack of trained overseas foreign intelligence agents who speak local languages and know local customs on which they stake their lives.

While I can easily give Rendition a B+ for effort, it just does not give the American people the real message: our torture methods that now include the much discussed "water boarding" used in Rendition and other harsh interrogation measures are taking this democracy down a big black hole. Rendition and its torture scenes are not scary – it is who we have become.