Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Omar Metwally, Reese Witherspoon
The US’s practice of kidnapping and torturing terrorism suspects is important enough to be brought to the American mainstream, but this is not really the film to do it. Despite some engaging performances (particularly from two young ‘North African’ lovers), it’s impossible to overlook the fact that the dialogue is sometimes painfully preachy, and the whole set-up is far too hokey.
The victim of the rendition, El-Ibrahimi (Metwally), is clearly not a terrorist: he’s lived in the US for a long time; he’s attended a top-school; he’s married to muppet-faced soccer-mom Isabella (Witherspoon); he doesn’t even have a beard or a funny hat. Meanwhile, fresh-faced pencil-pusher Freeman (Gyllenhaal) is simply not the kind of man we could ever imagine being chosen to observe an interrogation — he’s precisely too fair-minded and liable to spill the story to the press.
All of this simplifies the moral categories: it’s the story of a good, innocent man facing an egregious injustice. We really need to ask ourselves: even if someone is collaborating with terrorists, do we have the right to imprison him without trial and torture him?
Is that really how best to defend our democracy?
The US’s practice of kidnapping and torturing terrorism suspects is important enough to be brought to the American mainstream, but this is not really the film to do it. Despite some engaging performances (particularly from two young ‘North African’ lovers), it’s impossible to overlook the fact that the dialogue is sometimes painfully preachy, and the whole set-up is far too hokey.The victim of the rendition, El-Ibrahimi (Metwally), is clearly not a terrorist: he’s lived in the US for a long time; he’s attended a top-school; he’s married to muppet-faced soccer-mom Isabella (Witherspoon); he doesn’t even have a beard or a funny hat. Meanwhile, fresh-faced pencil-pusher Freeman (Gyllenhaal) is simply not the kind of man we could ever imagine being chosen to observe an interrogation — he’s precisely too fair-minded and liable to spill the story to the press.
All of this simplifies the moral categories: it’s the story of a good, innocent man facing an egregious injustice. We really need to ask ourselves: even if someone is collaborating with terrorists, do we have the right to imprison him without trial and torture him?
Is that really how best to defend our democracy?
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