Directed by Gavin Hood, starring Jake Gyllenhall (Douglas Freeman), Reese Witherspoon (Isabella El Ibrahimi), Omar Metwally (Anwar Ibrahimi), Meryl Streep (Corinne Whitman), Peter Sarsgaard (Alan Smith), Zena Oubach (Fatima Abasi), Moa Kousas (Khalid), Alan Arkin (Senator Hawkins), 122 minutes, 2007.

This All-Star ensemble cast mounts a bit of a rant against the policy instituted in Clinton's time called "extraordinary rendition." This policy, since the US repeatedly affirms that it does not use torture, allows for individuals to be captured and transported to third countries that do allow torture in order to extract information to assist in "the war on terror." Its original intent was merely to "get the bad guys off the street" but since 9/11 has become integral to the gathering of intelligence data. Canadians are most familiar with this policy through the arrest of Maher Arar and his subsequent torture in Syria.

Anwar Ibrahimi was born in Egypt, and came to the US as a teenager, graduated as a chemical engineer, married Isabella and lives in Washington, DC. Returning from a conference in South Africa he is arrested, flown to Egypt and subjected to torture following the killing of a CIA agent in a terrorist bombing. Douglas Freeman is an inexperienced agent on the spot (not a "jackal") who has to fill in for his deceased boss and who must witness the interrogation and torture of what he comes to see as an innocent man.

Meanwhile, Isabella, not believing that her husband has "just disappeared" (his record of arrival has been wiped from computers) mounts a campaign through a former classmate and boyfriend who is now an assistant to a senator. She is blocked at every turn and finally abandoned by her friend and by her own government. Eventually, Freeman, sickened by the torture, arranges for Ibrahimi's escape.

A sub plot provides an ironic commentary on the mortal danger of losing one's moral anchor in the face of fear. Fatima, daughter of Abasi Fawal the torturer, has fallen in love with Khalid, a young Islamist whose brother and father were killed by Fawal's interrogators. They are a Romeo and Juliet couple who themselves die in the original bomb attack. (All becomes clear in a flashback at the end of the film.)

While the movie explores a dark side of the “war on terror”; the balance of security and civil liberties; the similarity of the arrogance of the CIA and the Islamic fundamentalists, it highlights for us the higher claims of moral action in a violent world. Jesus' articulation of the Golden Rule is not simply a recipe for polite behaviour but the articulation of a larger or "Meta principle" underlying all moral action. Moral action must be generalizeable and reversible; that is, what I advocate must apply equally to all and what I advocate for you must also apply equally to myself. Such questions of morality and value must transcend tactical questions or our culture loses any moral legitimacy it presumes to foster.

While one can appreciate the ironies that run through the film’s two stories this is not an easy film to watch. A short documentary called "Outlawed" is part of the DVD and grounds the practice of "extraordinary rendition" in real life experience.