Rendition Critic Reviews

Rendition is valuable and rare. As I wrote from Toronto: "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."Read the full review

A maddening film, maddening in a good way, but maddening nonetheless.Read the full review

While the ingredients are there to make a tense and compelling post-9/11 thriller, Rendition falls flat.Read the full review

Rendition offers few surprises, and it tips its hand too soon and too predictably to do much more than goose your weary outrage.Read the full review

Rendition certainly makes the case that torture, whatever name it goes under, is indefensible, yet one can agree with that view entirely and still feel that the movie is just a borderline exploitation of what anyone who reads the papers already knows.Read the full review

A well-meaning, honorable movie. Which is not to say that it is a very good one.Read the full review

Reese Witherspoon paces and cries through Rendition in a performance that does as much a disservice to her talent as the movie does to the issues it raises.Read the full review

Forget the thin characters and showoffy temporal structure. Rendition's worst flaw is its political deck-stacking.Read the full review

With a cast this stacked, the performances are predictably strong (particularly from Sarsgaard, whose slow-burning role recalls his work in Shattered Glass), but the first impression they make is the same as the last.Read the full review