Further Thinking on Rendition

I was talking to my brother about the movie and something occurred to me. The movie saves face by making a point midway through the film. Peter Sarsgaard's character is grilling Meryl Streep's character about a man she ordered to be interrogated in another country. She asks if he's taking issue with the treatment of one man he has personal ties to or rendition as a policy. If memory serves me correctly, Sarsgaard doesn't answer. And in that way he does. Rendition is about rendition in the case of one man whose terrorist involvement is up in the air, but is most likely a case of misunderstanding. Very early on, we learn that Anwar passed a polygraph that should have saved him from the ordeal but was dismissed as inconsequential.

If the film had dealt with rendition in the case of someone who was interrogated and revealed information that saved hundreds, thousands, or millions of lives, the policy could have been seen in a different light. Still, the questions of whether evil is ever necessary, or if the ends in the case of rendition justify the means are some worth talking about.