Rendition, the star-clogged exercise in anti-Administration paranoia, is getting waterboarded at the box office.

Perhaps the production team should be secretly loaded on a plane for Oman:

It’s not easy to make a dull film when your central components include terrorism, torture, secret CIA operations and contempo Middle East intrigue, but Gavin Hood has done it with “Rendition.” By underplaying the melodrama in the presumed hope of seeming subtle when Kelley Sane’s script is so baldly melodramatic, the “Tsotsi” helmer drains the life out of an obviously explosive subject…The CIA’s sliver of evidence against [Reese Witherspoon’s Egytian-born hubby] is records of a few cell phone calls to him from someone who may only coincidentally have the same name as a known terrorist. But that’s enough for the CIA’s terrorism guru (Meryl Streep, brandishing a slight Southern accent and too-obvious negative commentary about her nasty character) to have Anwar “put on a plane” and officially become a missing person.

Who do these people think they are, Michael Moore?

(Via Kouba @ TvM)