'RENDITION' AN INTERESTING, BUT UNFULFILLING TAKE ON TERROR WAR.

Byline: BOB STRAUSS

>FILM CRITIC

This week's film foray into the war on terror tries to be really comprehensive. But with at least three major story tracks to keep servicing, "Rendition" has to skimp on the human side of the conflict it so dearly wished to illuminate.

With a powerhouse cast of Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin and Omar Metwally, plus a fine roster of performers from another side of the world, scenes certainly have impact.

Plus, there's the subject matter of the U.S. practice of interrogating prisoners in another country where constitutional niceties don't apply. That can't help but lead to compelling drama and gripping horror.

But even with all of that, too many characters seem to be going through prescribed motions here while overdetermined plot strands click into place. Screenwriter Kelley Sane's first-timer status becomes even more evident at the end, when a barely set-up narrative gimmick makes the whole thing feel like the filmmakers were going for effect rather than truth and insight.

Gyllenhaal's Douglas Freeman is a thoughtful CIA analyst in an unnamed North African country who is suddenly promoted to station chief when a suicide bombing kills his boss. That blast was apparently meant to take out a local secret police honcho, Abasi Fawal (Israeli actor Igal Naor), but didn't.

Meanwhile, on the southern end of the continent in Capetown, Egyptian-American chemical engineer Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Metwally) is preparing to fly home after a successful business conference. When he doesn't arrive and can't be contacted, Anwar's nine-months-pregnant wife, Isabella (Witherspoon), heads to Washington, where an old lover, Alan (Sarsgaard), works for a powerful senator (Arkin). She fretfully cools her heels in the congressional office while Alan uncovers mounting evidence that Anwar has been rendered somewhere far away, probably on the orders of hard-as-nails CIA official Corrinne Whitman (Streep).

Three guesses where. Abasi ends up torturing Anwar while Douglas observes and grows increasingly uneasy with the process -- essentially cooling his heels too, he drinks to cope with it. The Arab cop isn't really a bad guy, he's just doing what to him is a necessary job. Plus, Abasi's worried about his teenage daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach), who's run away from home, probably to shack up with that dreamy religious boy Khalid (Moa Khouas).

Enough plot for you? It sure is for director Gavin Hood, who made the Oscar-winning South African film "Tsotsi." He shifts between "Rendition's" multiple locations nimbly enough, and I guess there was really no other way to tell this complicated story. But you can't help thinking that "Rendition" would make a stronger impression, and make its point more disturbingly, if we were able to spend more than 10 minutes at a time with any of its besieged souls. In trying to respect every character's point of view, Hood doesn't reveal enough about any of them to make us truly care.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

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RENDITION - Two and one half stars

>R: violence, language, nudity.

>Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Omar Metwally, Meryl Streep, Peter Sarsgaard, Alan Arkin, Igal Naor, Moa Khouas, Zineb Oukach.

>Director: Gavin Hood.

>Running time: 2 hr. 2 min.

>Playing: Citywide.

>In a nutshell: A trick ending hurts it, but it's often interesting.

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Jake Gyllenhaal plays a CIA analyst who is uneasy watching a terror suspect being tortured in "Rendition."