Rendition (2007).
Based on "Extraordinary rendition, also called irregular rendition, is the government-sponsored abduction and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another.[1] Although many other countries have in the past participated in the program, it is almost exclusively carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency and United States government,[2] with at least 50 such CIA detainees having been identified by human rights groups in the past.[3]" Wikipedia. It is said that this practice has increased out of all proportion since 9/11.
There are 3 or 4 main strands to this film which strongly opposes the above. In one strand we have an apparently innocent specialist engineer of Egyptian descent who now lives in the US but has been on a business trip. He gets on the plane to fly home but never meets his wife at 'Arrivals' as he has been abducted by the CIA on extremely flimsy circumstantial 'evidence'. Meryl Streep is the arch villain in charge of authorising these renditions and she authorises for this guy to be flown to an unspecified country for interrogation, best guess is Morocco.
In one strand we have the detainees wife (Reese Witherspoon) in the US desperately doing all she can to get any information on what has happened to her husband, but even with her connections to persons with access to the right people in the right places she finds any information hard to come by.
Another strand is the action in the interregation unit. Jake Gyllenhall is assigned there as an analyst, and his colleague who was meant to be the 'knuckle dragger' gets killed inadvertedently by a suicide bomber on his first day in the country. So Gyllenhall has to take over as the interregation observer. He soon forms the belief that the detainee is completely innocent of all charges. No one listens to him however. The boss of the daily running of the interregation dept has a very beautiful daughter, whose story forms another strand.
She has ran away from home as her father has arranged a marrage for her, but she is in love with another young man. We get to learn about the young lovers. The guy is an artist as a hobby, but is myseriously guarded about his treasured sketch book, and cleverly but casually he dismisses the sketch book that his g/f was about to browse at one moment, and she puts the book back.
Next we learn about a Jihadi movement gathering momentum in that city.
All the threads begin to interweave and to say anymore would be spolier territory. Some of the best things about this film, are that it is more than 'probably' still topical and relevant to this day, the understated but credible performances by all actors, and personally i also found the soundtrack or score amazing; sparingly but always with great timing there is a lush orchestral piece that reoccurs, along with some interesting middle eastern instrumental stuff, and at exactly the right moments to maximise the emotional impact of a scene a middle eastern sounding female vocalist sings/moans/wails in the most spine tingling and plaintive way imaginable.
I watched the film twice, cos first time i fell asleep before the ending, and after watching the ending the next chance i got i found it so good that i had to re-watch the whole film again. And it was well wort it cos i picked up on so many more details that i had missed the first time, including the spine tingling plaintive wails. Ive scoured youtube for that piece of music because it is amazing, unfortunately it is not on there.
"Reviews for Rendition were mixed. Roger Ebert awarded the film four stars out of four, saying, "Rendition is valuable and rare. 'It is a movie about the theory and practice of two things: torture and personal responsibility. And it is wise about what is right, and what is wrong.'" Wikipedia
IMO it is the best film of this type, yet made. I can now see both sides of the story much more clearly.
EDIT: Finally managed to find some of that middle eastern music that featured in the film:
Journal - Paul hepker & Mark kilian - from the movie Rendition