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This image provided by New Line Cinema shows Meryl Streep, left, and Alan Arkin, right, in "Rendition." (Sam Emerson, New Line Cinema)

A terrorist attack in North Africa sparks an international manhunt in Gavin Hood's Rendition. The search reveals that a suspected terrorist has recently contacted a seemingly innocent chemical engineer living in the Chicago suburbs.

On his way home from Cape Town, Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) suffers from the “extraordinary rendition” policy. This practice is currently the implemented strategy of extraditing suspected terrorists to undisclosed locations where they are tortured for information. After waiting at the gate terminal for her husband to return, Isabella El-Ibrahimi (Reese Witherspoon) begins piecing together his whereabouts.

Unable to locate any new information on her own, Isabella asks Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard) an ex-boyfriend who now works for a senator to help her. Alan uses his connections and those of his boss, Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), to learn that Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) is the top government official with information on Anwar's case.

Not only is Corrine aware of Anwar's predicament, she is responsible for it. Douglass Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the American representative that must oversee Anwar's “interrogation” since his boss was killed in the terrorist attack Anwar is accused of aiding.

If this wasn't enough to keep the audience interested, the romantic subplot involving the torturer's daughter packs an emotional wallop as well. Many will accuse this movie of being too simplistic with a rigid stance against all manner of intelligence agencies or a sweeping indictment of the government and its handling of international affairs. But this would be misguided resistance of a film that merely questions the approach of condemning an entire corner of the world as extremist monsters.

This movie is a haunting character study of one family needlessly traumatized because of gang mentality. Rendition does contain a speech regarding the possible detriments for these policies to be in place, but it attempts to illustrate that terrorism is a problem that must be handled with clear thought and investigation, rather than blind violence.