Skilful thriller on rendition's impact; DVDS/BOOKS Film critic

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), Feb 29, 2008

Byline: By DAMON SMITH

Rendition (Cert 15, 117 mins, Enter tainment In Video, Thriller) Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Omar Metwally, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin, Igal Naor, Zineb Oukach, Moa Khouas.

IN the wake of a terrorist bombing, Egyptian-born chemical engineer Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Metwally) is detained during his flight from Cape Town to Washington D.C.

Under the guise of "extraordinary rendition," he is spirited abroad to a prison facility overseen by Abasi Fawal (Naor). CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Gyllenhaal) observes the subsequent 'interrogation' and is horrified by Abasi's techniques, voicing his concerns to the CIA's head of terrorism, Corrinne Whitman (Streep), to no avail.

Meanwhile, Anwar's pregnant wife Isabella (Witherspoon) tries to locate her missing husband, using her connection to Alan Smith (Sarsgaard), aide to a well-connected senator (Arkin).

Rendition is a skilfully crafted thriller exploring the devastating impact of one rendition on two seemingly unconnected families.

Gavin Hood's film addresses the complex political and moral issues with flair, walking that perilously thin line between right and wrong, where an act of brutality could save a life or just as quickly end it.

Scriptwriter Kelley Sane cuts back and forth between the various storylines with aplomb, dropping an almighty narrative bombshell in the closing minutes. This final flourish makes up for some of clumsy writing earlier in the picture.

Rating: ***

Saw IV (Extreme Edition) (Cert 18, 95 mins, Lions Gate Home Entertainment UK Ltd, Horror/ Thriller, also available to buy DVD pounds 19.99/limited edition DVD pounds 29.99/Blu-ray pounds 29.99/Saw Quadrilogy DVD box set pounds 39.99) Starring: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Scott Patterson, Athena Karkanis, Lyriq Bent, Donnie Wahlberg, Betsy Russell.

DETECTIVE Hoffman (Mandylor) oversees the post mortem of evil and twisted Jigsaw (Bell) and takes charge of evidence retrieved from the dead man.

The grizzled cop also spearheads the hunt for the murderer of Kerry (Meyer), one of the detectives who apprehended Jigsaw.

Observed by two tenacious FBI profilers, agents Peter Strahm (Patterson) and Lindsay Perez (Karkanis), Hoffman begins to piece together evidence to reveal Jigsaw's twisted genius.

The cops face one final game of life and death when SWAT Commander Rigg (Bent), a friend of Kerry and her missing partner Detective Eric Mathews (Wahlberg), is abducted from his home and thrust into a maze of Jigsaw's fiendish traps. The clock is ticking...

Saw IV criss-crosses narrative threads from previous instalments, re-introducing at least one familiar face and embellishing the complex back-story of Jigsaw, a doting husband who foolishly hoped to save unfortunate souls by establishing a drugs clinic.

Scriptwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan try to paint their demonic killer as a victim but four films of gruesome survival games seems like overkill to justify one man's grief.

Hyperactive editing renders a couple of elaborate death sequences an incomprehensible blur, and characters are sketched in such flimsy detail that their grisly demise doesn't curry any sympathy.

The actors oblige with the loudest, most bloodcurdling screams they can muster to conceal the yawns of viewers that have seen it all before.

Rating: **

The Brothers Solomon (Cert 15, 89 mins, Sony Home Entertainment, Comedy/Romance, also available to buy DVD pounds 19.99) Starring: Will Arnett, Will Forte, Lee Majors, Kristen Wiig, Chi McBride, Malin Akerman.

CEREBRALLY challenged siblings John (Arnett) and Dean Solomon (Forte) have been raised by their domineering father Ed (Majors), who spirited them away to the Arctic and nurtured their curiosity with "home schooling and puppet-based sex education."

As a result, they have a perpetually optimistic outlook on life but no grasp of acceptable social skills, such as the ability to communicate with the opposite sex.

When the old man slips into a coma, the brothers decide the best way to rouse the brute from his slumber is to produce the grandchild Ed always wanted. So they pay surrogate Janine (Wiig) a hefty 12,000 dollars and head for the sperm bank, but parenthood poses myriad sticky problems.

The Brothers Solomon is crass and formulaic, playing like some moronic distant relative of Knocked Up, without any of the sweetness or emotion.

Rating: *

CAPTION(S):

TRAGIC WIFE: Reese Witherspoon as Isabella Fields El-Ibrahimi in Rendition - a skilfully crafted thriller