I came out of "Rendition" with a list of flaws a mile long, so how is it that my overall impression is that it was a pretty decent movie? It's definitely a film whose sum is better than its parts.<br /><br />Those parts include a cast of big name stars, not one of them giving a memorable performance (Omar Metwally, a relative unknown, is the one you'll remember); serviceable if undistinguished direction; and a screenplay that's both too complicated and too simplistic at the same time. Metwally is an Egyptian-born American citizen who gets kidnapped by the U.S. government's rendition program, otherwise known as the process by which America tortures suspected terrorists into confessing information whether or not it's remotely true. Reese Witherspoon plays his pregnant wife, who calls in the favor of an old college friend (Peter Saarsgard), who works for a senator (Alan Arkin) and helps to track her husband down. Meryl Streep plays the head of the rendition program; Jake Gyllenhaal is a young agent assigned to the interrogation and whose conscience gets in the way. Meanwhile, a whole parallel storyline follows the daughter of a top Egyptian official who is allied to the American rendition program and her boyfriend, who's in training to become a suicide bomber.<br /><br />Ay-yi-yi that's a lot of plot to pack into a two-hour movie, and I was about to wash my hands of the whole thing, especially the Egyptian Romeo and Juliet subplot that felt like nothing more than a distraction. But then near the film's finale, a twist of chronology brings all of the plot strands together in a way that makes you want to reassess everything you thought you knew about the motivations of the various characters, and makes "Rendition" a much more interesting movie than it seems like it's going to be.<br /><br />Witherspoon, Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard all look like high school students playing adults twenty years older than they actually are -- Gyllenhaal in particular, usually a fine actor, looks so bored that you wonder if he's going to muster the energy to deliver his lines. And the screenwriter should be arrested for having an actress as good as Meryl Streep at his disposal and giving her nothing more to work with than this one-dimensional dragon lady. The movie of course strives for relevancy, but instead of addressing the tangled web of arguments surrounding the national security issue, it charges right down the middle of the debate in a predictable fashion. There are moments when you think maybe the film will veer off in an interesting direction -- what if Witherspoon did actually begin to doubt her husband's past, for instance? What if Metwally actually had been in contact with terrorists, as his interrogators accuse? But no, the movie takes the path of least resistance.<br /><br />But, like I said upfront, I recommend this movie. I know I've done nothing but list a bunch of its faults, but it's got its head in the right place, and it is entertaining, or at least as as entertaining as a movie about torture and interrogation can be.<br /><br />Grade: B+