Rendition revisited!

A few days ago I watched the movie ‘Rendition’ and subsequently a few events took place in my life which I could relate to the movie. It’s amazing how life sometimes throws so many coincidences at you.

For those who have not watched the movie, here is a brief summary to put things into perspective. The movie is about the impact of US Foreign Policy post Sep 2011 that allowed US authorities to detain suspects in secret facilities (mostly at foreign locations) and interrogate them. Basically rendition involves detention and interrogation without a trial. The movie is a good one, albeit a little slow paced, it has a very good plot and two stories have been presented very well that gives the viewer enough to judge the policy.

Coming back to my story, a few days before we watched the movie I had received a call from my cousin who lives in Dubai. He calls me every now then, just for the usual family talks. This time when he called I was at work and was busy so I informed him that I would call back later. I called him the day after I watched this movie (Rendition), nothing spooky till now. Somehow I must have goofed up the number, because when I dialed someone at the other end picked up and acknowledged in Arabic (guess so). I had no clue what he was talking about, I tired English and a couple of other languages that I can speak but this fellow kept talking in his language. I tried repeating my Cousin’s name, hoping this was some friend of his who might have accidentally got hold of this cell or maybe someone who works with him. No luck, the person at the other end went on non stop. Frustrated (and a little scared), I said ‘sorry, wrong number’ and hung up.

If you are wondering why I got scared, it had something to do with ‘Rendition’. In the movie the person they detain is a good law abiding citizen who is detained only because the intelligence agency traced some calls to his cell phone from someone in the troubled parts of the world. Does that ring a bell?

Later that day, a little past midnight, a message popped up near the taskbar on my laptop indicating that I had received an invitation from a new contact on Skype. Apparently someone wanted to be in touch with me, nothing wrong with this until I find that the name of this new contact is ‘Pervez Khan’. I really got terrified, not just because of the name, but because of the things that had happened earlier that day and more importantly because I have never come across anyone with this name. This was too much of a coincidence for me, I immediately blocked the contact, turned off my laptop and tried to get some sleep.

Phew! What a day it was, I am hoping that the coincidences in my life related to ‘Rendition’ ended that day itself.

300

300 – A magnificent portrayal of brave men with beautifully chiseled bodies battling against equally hideous creatures.

For me this single sentence sums up the whole movie. It’s a beautiful movie, provided you can stand spurts of blood, chopped limbs and a lot of slaughtering. Even these aspects may not look all that gruesome since the makers have given it a highly stylized touch, and some of the war scenes have been done so awe inspiringly, I don’t recollect any other movie depicting the battle scene so vividly. You actually feel being on the screen and piercing through the maze of Persians being thrown at you, it’s truly a CGI and animation masterpiece.

Though the movie scores heavily on its brilliant visuals, sound effects and characterization, what it seriously lacks is a strong content. It just ends up a battlefront movie and nothing more. Director Zack Snyder was so hell bent on translating Frank Millers comic book onto large screen that most of the parts of the movie look like comic book stuff rather than looking real. I expected houses, landscapes and humans set in 450 B.C to be more real and life like rather than looking like painted houses, brush stroked backgrounds and monstrous-alien-like creatures. The portrayal of Persian army with warriors from different parts of Asia might trigger off some archeological excavations for a lot of extinct ugly human cousins. These at times look so much prominently out of place that it spoils the whole canvas of the movie. A little more real life portrayal of these might have done wonders for the movie, but then one must understand that Snyder and Miller had other ambitions for this movie.

There is a lot of talk about similarities that this movie bears with its successful predecessors ‘Gladiator’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy. The background score and scenes where Queen Gorgo and her son are shown in fields are the only similarity with ‘Gladiator’. But 300 strongly lacks the human touch, Ridley Scott went to great depths in depicting Maximus’s struggle. He made us go through the pain that Maximus endured and the concept of taking vengeance seemed the only palpable, rather a must, climax. However in Snyder’s case, though the men are rightly fighting for the freedom of their country, it looks more like a self inflicted act by a bunch of battle crazy warriors. The creatures in ‘300’ resemble some of those from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, especially the ‘Gollum’ like treacherous ‘Ephialtes’, but the similarities end right there as the trilogy was an epic in all sense (including the length of the movie) whereas 300 is only a glorious depiction of an epic battle. While the battlefront scenes really make a visual splendor the rest of the movie only looks like shady comic book stuff.