n Rendition, Omar Metwally plays Anwar El-Ibrahimi, a chemical engineer, born in Egypt and a 20-year resident of the U.S., who has successfully worked his way up to a $200,000-a-year consulting position. Born in Egypt, he left the country at age 14 and has lived a picket fence life in the U.S. ever since. While having a Green Card, he is not a U.S. citizen yet. He is happily married and his second child is on the way.

But after a series of coincidences while he is out of the country on a business trip, his cozy life is ripped apart when he is kidnapped (but never actually arrested) by the CIA in Washington, D.C. and taken out of the country on a private plane.

You see, a bomb has gone off on a busy city street in North Africa, killing a CIA agent, and the agency chief (Meryl Streep) wants answers. The CIA feels Anwar is involved due to records of a few cell phone calls made to him from someone who may only coincidentally have the same name as a known terrorist, which Anwar vehemently denies. So the former business man is shipped to a Moroccan jail and beaten unconscious on a daily basis.

But the CIA feel they have their man (the title refers to the Bush-approved invention of 'Extraordinary Rendition," a custom of sending an American terror suspect to another country where torture is utilized). CIA field paper-pusher Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) oversees the torture, but with mixed messages: One moment he is torturing Anwar, the next he's boozing the night away in a haze of guilt.

Streep is chilling as the high-handed CIA official who writes the interrogation policy that determines the cruel, degrading, inhuman treatment and punishment of terrorist suspects. Meanwhile, Reese Witherspoon stomps around Washington, D.C., as Anwar's pregnant soccer mom wife, furious that her picture-perfect husband has been whisked away from their catalog-friendly suburban life and shuttled off to a North African jail. She's forced into hounding an old boyfriend (Peter Sarsgaard) who works for Sen. Hawkins (Alam Arkin), in the hope that he can use his contacts to help her get some answers.

The Moroccan prison chief (Yigal Naor) is the film’s most intriguing and nuanced character; he ties the elements together, even though Gyllenhaal ends up with the glory. The movie makes its points often and bluntly, but by crafting an intricate and engaging story out of this country’s most despicable “weapon” in the war on terror, it’s possible that its message may be better received than the dozens of damning documentaries of late.

Despite the high stakes of taking on a super-charged subject, Rendition plods along with little vitriol and even less energy. Director Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi") orchestrates a few impressive sequences, most notably the shockingly nonchalant abduction sequence at the beginning, for the most part, Rendition is a melodramatic tale unredeemed by its good intentions.