AUTHENTIC RENDERING 'RENDITION' SETS ASIDE ARAB STEREOTYPES.

Byline: >BY BOB STRAUSS

>FILM WRITER

The war on terror has had many surprising side effects. One of the least expected -- in Hollywood, anyway -- is the proliferation of Arab and Muslim roles in films.

And not just as fanatic terrorists. Several recent and upcoming movies such as "The Kingdom," "O, Jerusalem" and this week's release "Rendition" make an effort to humanize and differentiate Arab characters, and present them with multiple points of view.

Although "Rendition" stars hot property Jake Gyllenhaal and the Oscar-winning trio of Reese Witherspoon, Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin, almost half of the film is focused on Muslims in an unnamed North African country.

"Everyone said, 'You never have scenes with the actors that we know, Meryl or Reese or Peter Sarsgaard or Alan Arkin,' " notes Gyllenhaal, who plays a troubled CIA analyst observing the torture interrogation of an Egyptian-American suspected in a bombing conspiracy. "I'd say, 'Yeah, but I actually worked with the equivalent of those actors in a whole other part of the world.' "

In fact, the extraordinarily rendered captive Anwar is played by Omar Metwally, who was born in New York and grew up in Orange County. His main interrogator, Abasi, is portrayed by Israeli actor Igal Naor. Abasi is concerned about his missing teenage daughter Fatima, who's played by Morocco-born actress Zineb Oukach. And Fatima's hiding out with a soulful young man, Khalid (French-Algerian actor Moa Khouas) who, though deeply in love with her, is too close for comfort with a group of Islamic radicals.

For these actors, "Rendition" represents a mostly positive trend that's emerged out of terrible circumstances.

"I think, if anything, it might be the silver lining to all of this conflict -- if you can say that there is one -- that it has created a desire for deeper communication and understanding," says Metwally, whose father is from Egypt and mother from Holland. "And artists and filmmakers are kind of at the vanguard of that.

"Every character in this film is fully human and fleshed-out," Metwally adds. "But on the larger question, I think that the depth and complexity of Arab roles have increased greatly. A lot of the stories still tend to be in the overall context of the war on terror, and I think that's the next box to break out of.

"How about a story about Arab people that has nothing to do with terrorism, which 99 percent of the time is the case, you know? They live lives, have families, work and have all of the same human drama that people in any country have.

"That's something that I would like to see. But I think that there's certainly been progress."

And fairly quickly, at that. Although there was only a trickle of war on terror-related movies from 2002 to 2006, a torrent of them hits theaters this fall.

That's actually much faster than it took to get films about America's last controversial conflict, Vietnam, made; major movies about that war didn't start appearing until 1978, three years after the fall of Saigon. The few Hollywood films that highlighted Indochinese lives, such as "The Killing Fields" and "Heaven & Earth," weren't released until later decades.

Although "Rendition" was directed by South Africa's Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi"), it is by any measure a big Hollywood production.

The France-based Arab actors in the film feel it captures something of North African life persuasively enough.

"A movie is obviously something that you create," notes Khouas, who got his first taste of the Hollywood system in Steven Spielberg's "Munich," which Metwally and Naor also appeared in. "You cannot compare it to real life, but that's OK. What I like in this movie is that it gives me a chance to show the feelings of a young man, and make the audience try to understand that whether you are from an Arab country, America, France or whatever, you are a human being first. He has the same feelings that you have."

For Oukach, her first Hollywood film was remarkably relatable. She's the daughter of a Casablanca cop who, like the film's Fatima, left home to follow a passion her father disapproved of.

In Oukach's case, that meant moving to France to become an actress. But filming "Rendition's" North Africa sequences in the Moroccan city of Marrakech brought a lot back.

"At the beginning of the script I read, I thought this would be just another American movie about Arabs," Oukach admits. "But it wasn't like this, because as I read more about my character, Fatima, I recognized myself in her.

"I grew up in Morocco and I know very well about the subject of torture, and I remember guns in the house when I was a child, a lot of things. I don't talk about those things a lot, but they were in my head and when I made 'Rendition' everything came out. I spoke a lot with Gavin about it before we shot."

Igal Naor is nothing like Zineb's estranged father, though, even if he plays a tough Arab cop and parent in the movie. An Israeli Jew whose family hails from Iraq, he's a bighearted, worldly sort -- who, nonetheless, admits to having killed his country's enemies back when he was a member of the Israel Defense Forces.

Naor notes that the increase in Arab roles has been great for his career; he's even playing Saddam Hussein in the upcoming HBO miniseries "Between Two Rivers." But Naor insists that he brings the same degree of empathy to a Muslim character as he would to any other.

"I'm not ashamed of anything I'm doing," Naor says. "As an actor, I should say about any character I play that this is a human being just like me. He has these problems, those weaknesses, these things in his mind, and that's why he behaves like this. Audiences can judge him, but I can't.

"I was asked, 'Are you a monster in this movie?' " Naor relates. "I said, 'Not in my eyes.' 'Did your character enjoy torturing prisoners?' I said, 'I hope you saw that I wasn't.' "

The actor on the receiving end of Abasi's merciless techniques notes that ethnic differences never entered his mind.

"I just don't identify myself by that kind of tribal thinking," Metwally says. "Igal is my colleague; I don't care where he's from. He's also an incredibly charming guy; you just love the guy, everybody does. The hard part was acting like I was afraid of him!"

Naor says that he never experiences tension with Muslim co-stars.

"They're my best friends, my brothers," the Israeli says. "There was nothing between us. I wish our leaders would come and see how easily this can be done, because we are so, so undifferent. We look alike, we like the same food, we enjoy the same weather ... we are so much brothers."

Others hope viewers will get at least an inkling of that from films such as "Rendition."

"There are lots of movies about Iraq and about Arabs," Oukach notes. "I like that, because Americans build their history through the cinema. You had John Ford's Westerns, films about the Vietnam War, and now you are here today because American people want to know about what happened after 9/11. What are Arabs? What is Islam? Today, America is ready to understand."

And, she hopes, that effect might work both ways in a polarized world.

"Why I want to be an actress is because cinema communicates between a lot of people," Oukach concludes. "When this movie is released in Morocco, Arab people can go to it and understand something. My family can go to see 'Rendition,' and maybe it can change their minds."

Bob Strauss, [phone]

[e-mail]

Politics is all in the family

Jake Gyllenhaal has appeared in such controversial films as "Jarhead," "Brokeback Mountain" and now "Rendition," and comes from a politically active Hollywood family (mom Naomi Foner wrote "Running on Empty," about aging, on-the-run '60s radicals; sister Maggie has made her share of anti-war statements).

So we figured he must have chosen partisan sides in the upcoming presidential election by now, right?

Not quite.

"I'm homing in, and I feel like there's a lot more promise in the Democratic candidates than there is in the Republican candidates," the 27-year-old actor says. "But really, don't you have to say, 'OK, I'm going to have to look at both sides and see who's saying anything interesting'?

"In our world, we're so split by party loyalty. I encourage people, and myself, to really listen to what candidates say they're going to do. You can't really make a choice unless you see the whole spectrum."

So far, though, Jake -- unsurprisingly -- seems to be leaning Democrat. "But I have yet to figure out which one of them," he says.

>B.S.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) TERRORIST OR VICTIM?

Thriller 'Rendition' presents complex Arab character

(2) Omar Metwally, center, plays Egyptian Anwar El-Ibrahimi, on his way to a secret prison, in "Rendition," which examines politics and interpersonal relationships in the Middle East.

(3) no caption ('Rendition')

(4) no caption (Jake Gyllenhaal)

Box:

Politics is all in the family (see text)