Extraordinary Rendition

The bible says that as you sow so shall you reap.If you say that kidnapping, torture and denying basic civil rights is evil, you may be the next target? We have by our actions internationallybecome a nation with war criminals in the police forces( CIA and FBI?).This film is pretty much the documentary of one of thousands of cases:in this case a Pakistani college professor is kidnapped and tortured.He was innocent and came back alive, but polarized and pretty much psychologically destroyed. Mind and body can take only so much ineven the strongest. I read a tale by a Russian where this kind of treatment was given to political prisoners: he said the best you can dois stop eating and get very sick. They may let you live or not.The alternative of endlessly dying and being revived is enough to break any firm spirit. The practice or deliverance of people without anytrial or real legal process to such treatment is actually recognized since WWII as a war crime by the Geneva convention ( on soldiers or civilians).How do I feel knowing that my country which is supposed to stand forfreedom of expression and civil right is doing this kind of thing?I'm frankly ashamed. I think if it happens to one,then none are really safe ( on trumped up excuses or other charges).Be afraid.

This movie provides a view into the ugliness of the war in Iraq as seen from both sides, that of the invader and that of the violated citizens of a country that has been subjugated to invasion. If for anything, it is well worth watching because it provides a balanced view of the disaster that Iraq has become. It should serve as a healthy warning to those occupying lands against the will of the inhabitants that occupation really is a fruitless and bloody venture that cannot succeed and ends only in further fueling hatred and retaliation.

You need a very stomic a lot of rape of man hard integer ion Water boarding , yelling screaming , if you have a strong billy watch it

I think that this is one of the best movie that I have ever seen in my life and andy serkis is on of the best actors in the world.

'Extraordinary Rendition' is a pretty dark and bleak look at extraordinary rendition flights since 911. It had the feel of a crimewatch reconstruction at times and the acting was a little wooden, but the themes explored were quite shocking and Andy Serkis managed to be truly menacing in his role of interrogator. The film didn't have a conclusive ending and left me with many unanswered questions. It is relatively short at 77 minutes and it could easily have stretched to 90 and tied up these loose ends. It is a worthy film for the topic it explores alone, it's just a shame it wasn't carried out a little better. A solid 3 stars.Feel free to check out my blog which can be found on my profile page.

Excellent film, although it wasn't as popular as the version with Reese Witherspoon.Nonetheless, this is a great movie! Very glad that Omar [Berdouni] is getting credit and popularity he deserves as an excellent actor.

It is sad that America, supposedly more humane than banana republic dictators, Nazis, or communist dictators sunk to this level out of fear of a small band of Al Qaeda type terrorists. American shipped suspects to foreign countries, who carried out these tactics, while the American administration could claim "plausible denial." It is Sad to say that the American media played along to cover up these tactics.

great movie

Opening with a richly ironic quote from Dick Cheney that men without conscience are capable of any degradation the human mind can imagine, Extraordinary Rendition clearly wants to be a throwback to the political cinema of the 60s, when films by directors like Costa-Gavras could deal with recent events and have a real impact, but while it has the urgency and the passion it lacks the ability to do its subject justice. It's a classic case of a new director trying to make a mark with an important subject they don't yet have the skills to pull off. You can't fault the motives or the desire to bring to attention Britain's scandalous policy of colluding in the abduction of its own citizens and sending them to states where torture is practised for interrogation, and it's hard not to agree with the film's position that such practices often only act to radicalise minorities and increase potential threats. It's the execution that is the problem.The story is simple enough - a Muslim teacher (Omar Berdouni, one of the terrorists in United 93) is abducted, drugged and shipped to an Arab country where he's interrogated and tortured to confess to crimes he's never informed of - but the film often tries to overcomplicate it in the editing suite. The fractured narrative and timeline, mixing before and after the abduction with the interrogations, doesn't work at all, robbing the film of any immediacy and constantly taking us away from the central drama. Because we know he survives, there's no tension, and since the film goes out of its way not to shock its potential audience away, there's little of the relentless horror and uncertainty that a film about human rights violations should convey. Indeed, it's that polite sensibility that really dooms the film; a polite treatment of an ugly subject isn't really appropriate. While it's admirable that it avoids torture porn, there's little to make you feel uncomfortable until the last 15 minutes or so when the film finally starts to build up some power.While there's a lot to be said for focussing on one person's experience, by doing so it misses out on the wider political issues - such as the question of Britain willingly giving up its sovereignty along with its citizens in the interests of a foreign power that won't reciprocate - while failing to create an involving human drama to compensate. You simply don't care much for any of the thinly sketched characters. While it doesn't trivialize the issue, it doesn't humanise it either. There's little in the domestic scenes to convince that these are people rather than actors, let alone characters you can really feel and empathise with. At times it feels more like a TV crime reconstruction, with all the attendant weaknesses.Technically, the low budget often makes itself felt. Director Jim Threapleton has some interesting visual ideas, but parts of it feel photocopied from other films. The quality of the handheld 2.35:1 widescreen video photography changes from frame to frame in the early scenes and the sporadic moments of shakeycam or MTV cutting feel a bit laboured, giving it the sense of nice, middle-class boys trying to keep it street to keep the kids watching. The plot mechanics are a bit ropey too, with that clumsy first-or-second-take feel to some scenes and performances. On the plus side, it does a good job of showing how the hero relies more on what is hinted as a more fundamentalist form of Islam during his captivity, while Andy Serkis is superb as the interrogator ("I just have a job to do"), and it's in his scenes that the film really finds its feet. It's just a shame the film doesn't trust their quiet power and constantly cuts away from them. B+ for intentions but a C- for achievement.The DVD offers a decent 2.35:1 widescreen transfer with commentary by the director and Berdouni, a 4-minute interview with the two at the Edinburgh Film Festival (where Threapleton seems unable to utter a single sentence that doesn't include the film's title and his star barely gets a word in), trailer and stills gallery.

This film is based heavily upon the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian arrested in 2002 at JFK Airport. Arar was taken to Syria and reportedly tortured and imprisoned for a year. Using research from this case Threapleton created Extraordinary Rendition.The film starts dramatically with a man being challenged by the police. Later on we learn that this is Ahmadi (played by Berdouni), a British citizen of Morrocan descent, but at the start he is just some man who looks as though he has been beaten-up.There are a lot of flashbacks which show you Ahmadi in happier times with his wife Ewa (Sowinski), before he gets attacked on a street in London and drugged and taken off in a private plane.Flashbacks continue to fill you in on the background of the main character. These reveal how college authorities find concerns with the topics he teaches his students. He is obviously a man who holds big opinions on democracy and terrorism, and has no qualms discussing these with his students.The film then shows Ahmadi being shipped to some country in the Middle East and being interrogated relentlessly by Maro (Serkis), where it is insinuated that Ahmadi has been financing the struggle to build an Islamic nation. Torture scenes include a fairly horrific scene of the technique termed as 'waterboarding', whereby the person is immobilised with their head inclined downward and has water poured over their face and breathing passages, forcing them to inhale water and to believe they will drown.Using a serious of flash-forwards, the viewer then sees Ahmadi returned to London, but so traumatised by the events that even his marriage to Ewa suffers.The film has a lot of promise, but it fails to fully impact upon the viewer as heavily as it could have. This may, in part, be due to the number of flashbacks and forwards, it just makes the film a bit too disjointed. The cutting between scenes merely detracts from the sense of relief Ahmadi must feel upon release, and upon his fear and isolation during his captivity.Having said that, it is a good effort, and for a low-budget film it is not lacking in realism, particularly in the powerfully directed torture scenes. It is, however, not a film for anybody looking for answers - it is a thought-provoking film that will bring questions to your mind that might not even have answers.

The British "Extraordinary Rendition", like it's big budget Hollywood counterpart "Rendition", has an important point despite being a flawed film as a whole. In this case it is a single scene towards the end of the film which takes waterboarding (a CIA endorsed interrogation technique of simulated drowning) from being a mere concept to a brutal reality. For this alone, people ought to watch the film.The film suffers from structural defects, beginning with Zaafir's abduction and then splicing both flashbacks and flashforwards into the resulting interrogation. At first the intention appears to be disorientating the viewer, but later it seems the goal was to ensure the eventual torture occurs at the end to avoid reaching a climax too early. The problem is that it breaks up the intensity of the interrogation, rendering it less effective.The flashbacks attempt to humanise Zaafir, a teacher, but they show only a few days before his abduction, feeling disconnecteed and unfocused. By contrast the flashforwards show his reclusiveness after his return, unable to reconnect with his wife, but without the context of what has happened to him it is difficult to empathise until the end.The gritty style is fitting for the subject matter and the low budget actually serves as an advantage over the Hollywood sheen that coats "Rendition". The small cast heightens the sense of isolation, particularly with the muted, washed-out colour of the flashforwards. The cast all perform well, but the only noteworthy performance is that of Andy Serkis as the conflicted interrogator, angry and bitter.So the film is worth seeing for its crucial scenes, but the end result feels somehow less than the sum of its parts, leaving less of an impact than one suspects it ought.

A Muslim teacher is caught up in a 'Kafka-esque' (someone had to say it) nightmare of detention and torture without knowing why, then released after signing a confession - or is it the start of another case for Jack Bauer or the Spooks team?Unfortunately everyone is in the dark in this film - the audience, the adbuctee and the interragator (who doesn't really seem sure what he is supposed to be asking anyway). All the 'shadowy figures' seem to want to do is convince the teacher that he is a terrorist and then make him sign a confession which, presumably, goes along the lines of 'I am a terrorist' then they release him. This raises questions for me but probably not the intended ones - why don't they seem to be trying to extract any type of useful information out of the teacher, they already seem to know everything about him? If they've already made him disappear and they are convinced he is a terrorist why not just kill him rather than release him? Why do they only start to torture him excessively to make him sign? Who are 'they'? And where was Jack Bauer?Based on 'fact' the film doesn't really go anywhere - exchange the human 'they' for aliens and you have the X-Files - by the end of the film everyone is confused, and to awful sound quality of the dialogue didn't improve matters.Give this one a miss unless you really really like uninspired one-sided political style films.

This is a powerful film examining one man's horrific experience as he is imprisoned and tortured without a trial. This is an impressive film, but not without it's flaws. Focusing on one man's experience does make the film more powerful, but it means that you don't see the situation in context. Whilst I am of course aware of the use of torture since 9/11 I have never heard the phrase "Extraordinary Rendition" before and I wasn't aware of all the details. Omar Berdouni gives an impressive performance, especially during the torture scenes. Whilst the scenes are graphic, they are not overly gory so you don't feel you are watching a horror film. Whilst I admire the director for keeping the film short I would have preferred it if he had explored the aftermath of this experience in more depth. We see ten minutes of the main character arguing with his wife, but I really wanted to discover what the long-term effects would be.Extras: The extras on this film are not very impressive. It consists of a very short interview with Jim Threapleton and Omar Berdouni (who hardly gets a word in). I would really have liked to see longer interviews with all the main members of the cast as well as some more background information on the story. As this is a important subject and some viewers may not know much about it I thought they would have made more of an effort with the extras.