"This is my first torture"

I havent' been blogging for a longtime and I blame it on the fact that I was too lazy too put my thoughts here. Hey, with the election season's here, adik shalinie still yet to be found, 2 papers in one week and my lately-so-constant-craving-for-food-and-switchfoot. So, I'm just going to blog on the freshest thing on my mind right now and that is a movie I watched last night - RENDITION.

Most of you would have heard what's the movie about. If you don't then it's basically a story about an Egyptian-American who have been 'taken' away from DC airport for 'CIA-style interrogation 'and the events leading to it and of course, how the wife tried so hard to find out what happened to him and how the new kid in the block finds out that not everything is perfect and black and white in the real world.

I think everyone did a good job in this movie especially Meryl Streep. Bravo for her coldness. The scariest thing about Streep's character is her conviction she knows what she is doing is right. She never doubts it. For a minute. So when she is confronted by the man's wife, Isabella (Witherspoon), she calmly and coolly tells the young mother that she is sorry for the woman's trouble, but she knows nothing. She manages to almost convince us and we know differently. At one point I feel like slapping her whenever she uses the 'national security' excuse.

Here's the part where I don't like about the movie - How they potray Islam and the biasness they have towards that potrayal. Unlike Peter Berg's The Kingdom which I really enjoyed and appreciate because the fact that he tried to show that there's more than just one side of the story. There's more to Islam than blowing off people(which I must say is never part of the religion and I would never tolerate people using religion as an excuse for that), it's also about submission-which Rendition shows it in the part that submission refers to wiping off the 'apostates and infidels'.

Here's what I like the movie : that the US is a hypocritical government and one that condones torture(hey,it's ok if we do it elsewhere, just not here). It's painful to see how a strong man can break down after a series of torture. How 'they' don't want the correct information but only 'information', as long as they get to blame it on someone.

Here are some of the interesting quotes :

"Honey, this is nasty business. There are upwards of 7,000 people in central London alive tonight, because of information that we elicited just this way. So maybe you can put your head on your pillow and feel proud for saving one man while 7,000 perish, but I got grandkids in London, so I'm glad I'm doing this job... and you're not.

And what if Anwar El-Ibrahami is your grandkid?"

"Why don't you ask your boss how badly he really does want to stick his neck out for a terrorist.

Well, he might for due process. Maybe I should have a copy of the Constitution sent to your office.

"In all the years you've been doing this, how often can you say that we've produced truly legitimate intelligence? Once? Twice? Ten times? Give me a statistic; give me a number. Give me a pie chart, I love pie charts. Anything, anything that outweighs the fact that if you torture one person you create ten, a hundred, a thousand new enemies."

For your information, the name of the Egyptian-American is Anwar El-Ibrahimi. This I just have to mention. It's up to you to create the links.