Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

dbborroughs A man is pulled off a London Street and taken to some foreign country where he is tortured as a terror suspect. Dull, banal film bored the hell out of me. More an idea then a film. I was half way into this 77 minute film when I realized I had no idea who anyone on screen was. It was as if they took every other similar film and pulled out all of the ideas and put them in one place with out the real notion of character. Certainly its well acted with passion but there is no emotional center, there is just an everyman of sorts which the filmmakers feel is enough. Its not. And while the story presented id in theory important as a warning the film is too dull to convince anyone of it, especially if one has seen the other, better films of a similar ilk (rendition with Reese Witherspoon for example)

paul2001sw-1 'Extraordinary Rendition' is a story about the kidnap and torture of foreign citizens by agents of the United States, in the context of suspected involvement of Islamic terrorism. But unlike Michael Winterbottom's 'The Road to Guantamano', which explored a similar theme, it eschews details for psychological insight into what it means to be tortured. There's an obvious message: say that people find God in adversity, or that the demonisation of Isalm is a self-fulfilling prophesy, but "we" are fighting this war in the wrong way on pragmatic grounds, even without consideration of the moral question. But the absence of specifics in this movie lets it down: there are echoes of the nightmare of '1984' about the vision it portrays, but while it serves as a warning, the story doesn't quite ring true - the suspect is made to endure a highly targetted and personal interrogation but we never learn why - and without definite context, the film risks making nothing more than the banal observation that torture is bad. The C.I.A. do kidnap and torture - but Winston Smith was justly guilty in the eyes of Big Brother, and you have to read the part of Orwell's book where Winston is free before you read the part about his imprisonment to truly understand. But this film makes no definite statements away from the torture chamber; making for a harrowing half-story, but a half-story nonetheless.

sddavis63 Life in the post 9/11 world is very complicated. During any time of war, the concept of friends and enemies is always at the forefront, and, although there may at times be some confusion over who fits where, for the most part in wartime friends and enemies are pretty well defined. That easy assumption is thrown out the window by essentially two things - the "war on terrorism" in which the enemy can be defined only by their thoughts rather than by their citizenship and by the complicated demographic nature of the world today where people from all over the world live together, work together and share citizenship with each other. The paranoia that easily grips a society after a horrendous attack - witness the incarceration of thousands of loyal Canadian and American citizens of Japanese descent after the attack on Pearl Harbour - can easily get out of hand. I can remember sitting in a University history course in the mid 1980's when the subject of Japanese detention was being lectured about, and our Professor (a very well known and highly respected first-rate historian) said that we consider such a thing terrible, but that if any such thing occurred again we would immediately start to identify who we thought the enemy was and deal with them - whether they really were the enemy or not. How prophetic.In "Extraordinary Rendition" Zaafir (Omar Berdouni) is a teacher at some level (university I would guess.) He upsets a couple of students by suggesting that there's not much difference between terrorists and freedom fighters, and that democracy is often born out of violence. Those are hardly radical concepts. I've heard it said many times that if the Americans had lost the Revolutionary War, George Washington would today be considered a terrorist. As it is, the United States regards him as a hero because he led them in a violent struggle for independence. These students apparently report him; authorities investigate him and build a case based largely on assumptions and hearsay without any solid evidence, and then pack him off to some unnamed country where he can be tortured into a confession.Although this is a British film, any Canadian will recognize the story of Maher Arar. Arar was a Canadian citizen born in Syria who for some reason attracted the attention of Canadian and American security officials. On a visit to the U.S. Arar was arrested, accused of being a terrorist and deported - not to Canada, where he was a citizen, but to Syria, where he was born. Why? Because in Syria he could be tortured and in Canada he couldn't be. That's extraordinary rendition.The basic story is chillingly told here, showing the happiness of Zaafir's life before all this happened, the horrendous experience he had in captivity and the devastating impact the experience had on him afterward. It's not a spy caper or a thriller. It's a very cold (in some ways) account of what can - and does - happen in today's world. There's really no resolution to the story in the end. We don't know whether Zaafir ever managed to get his life back together. I'm sure that was deliberate. The movie is supposed to leave the viewer thinking and struggling with the issues involved. Benjamin Franklin said "they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." And Edmund Burke said "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I think we need to relearn those lessons.The only thing difficult about this movie is that some of it is spoken in rather hushed tones that make some of the dialogue difficult to follow, but the dialogue isn't really all that necessary to follow the story. The pictures say it all. 9/10

Chris_Docker I suppose one of the things about living in a developed country is having things nicely packaged.If I eat meat, I don't want to be presented with vivid descriptions of slaughterhouses. News programmes can show pictures of fighting in Iraq, but detailed close-ups of severed limbs are inappropriate. But if I think food has caused unnecessary suffering or illegal cruelty I might want to know. If our boys abroad fighting for king and country have raped or pillaged, I expect them to be brought to justice. No gory details, you understand. Just do something about it.Words package things. In some cases, we can always work it out if we want a bigger picture. Foie gras. Eliminate an enemy target. Regime change. Go to the bathroom. Spare me the details.So what about phrases like extraordinary rendition? waterboarding? Well I can explain these, I think. Extraordinary rendition is when a terrorist suspect is transported to a foreign country. Waterboarding - there's been some human rights arguments over whether that's torture or not. You pour water on someone. They worry they're drowning. Doesn't sound very nice, but not like pouring acid on them or the really nasty stuff.The truth is, we don't have the vocabulary for things we've never imagined. Not just the words. The emotional vocabulary is lacking.Extraordinary Rendition follows Zaafir, a London-based academic. Suddenly he is snatched from the streets, locked in a shipping container, drugged and abused. He wakes up in a foreign country where he is tortured. Various details of his life come forward where erroneous assumptions could be made. As director Jim Threapleton says, "It's about the footprints we all leave in our lives. Whether it's your credit card statements, or destinations you travelled to in your year off, or an email you may or may not have opened. Under scrutiny, that can be misinterpreted or appropriated to an agenda." Eventually, Zaafir is released without charge.The film uses flashbacks and flash-forwards to tell the three segments of his life. His normal life as a teacher with friends and family. His traumatised self when he returns (and his uncompreheding wife). Horrific experiences abroad.That horrific segment is simply quite graphic. Waterboarding ceases to be a concept, hiding behind nicely packaged words. It's scary sh*t. Not that they stop at that. They do the more traditionally 'really nasty stuff' too.Extraordinary Rendition comes from a minute budget and no little integrity. It is careful not to point accusatory fingers (the truth is always more complicated), but equally careful in its researching of hundreds of cases. It was made with the assistance of Amnesty International. At the Edinburgh UK Premiere, producer Andy Noble was careful not to overstate facts (but he was equally knowledgeable and demonstrated a firm grasp of the data on the many real cases from which the story was inspired).The main drawback of Extraordinary Rendition is its narrative structure. As soon as we know the three different sections of Zaafir's life, not a lot is added by way of plot development. I also felt the story should stand on its own without the addition of background drumming and wailing for added effect (although the diegetic sounds of a person being tortured in an adjacent room were very effective.) As a work of fiction focussing on human rights, as a protest film, it is first rate. But as cinema entertainment it may well be swamped by similar themed films using larger budgets. Like the Hollywood version (called simply 'Rendition') due for mainstream distribution only months after the release of this film.