Witherspoon gives a dramatic `Rendition'

(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-10-17 09:13

Before her latest film, if anyone had asked Reese Witherspoon what the term "extraordinary rendition" meant, she might have answered with a blank stare.

The words could be bureaucratese for something as innocuous as a tax deduction. But as Witherspoon's "Rendition" spells out darkly and melodramatically, the term actually stands for a U.S. government practice of transferring terrorism suspects to other countries, where their interrogations could subject them to abuse and torture.

"I don't think I realized what the term was called," Witherspoon told The Associated Press at September's Toronto International Film Festival, where "Rendition" played in advance of its theatrical release Friday. "The term is not really in the popular vernacular.

"It sounds like public-policy rigamarole. It doesn't sound like anything that you would connect with the torture and detainment of innocent people."

"Rendition" marks the first release for Witherspoon, 31, since 2005's "Walk the Line," the Johnny Cash film biography in which she played the country-music legend's wife, June Carter Cash.

Though Witherspoon won the best-actress Academy Award for "Walk the Line," the dramatic turn she takes in "Rendition" may surprise fans of the performer best known for breezy comedies such as the "Legally Blonde" flicks and "Sweet Home Alabama."

In "Rendition," Witherspoon plays the wife of an Egyptian-born man (Omar Metwally) suspected of involvement in a Middle East terrorist bombing who is abducted by U.S. authorities and sent overseas for questioning at a secret facility. Jake Gyllenhaal co-stars as a CIA analyst who comes to question his government's sanctioning of such abusive interrogations.

As her character begs for answers from government officials, including a cold-hearted intelligence bureaucrat played by Meryl Streep, Witherspoon transforms into a desperate, emotional wreck.

As a master of the light touch, did Witherspoon find it tougher to get into the head of a woman in such distress?

"I wouldn't say tougher or not tougher. Every film is like its own set of difficulties or experiences that are emotionally challenging," Witherspoon said. "But this was certainly a more dramatic role than one of the comedies I've done.

"I think it's all the same. You come at it from a character perspective. It's just really doing that work of where is this person from, why do they have these attitudes, why did they marry this person and not that person? Just a lot of building back-story. There has to be a part of it where you feel like it could be an experience you could have or someone else could have."

"Rendition" director Gavin Hood, whose South African drama "Tsotsi" won the 2005 foreign-language Oscar, said Witherspoon's casting served as a Trojan horse to draw people into the movie.

Previous 1 2 Next Page