| Director | Gavin Hood |
|---|---|
| Genre | drama film, political thriller film |
| Runtime | 121 min |
| Country | South Africa, United States |
| Budget | $27.5 million |
| Box office | $27 million |
In North Africa, CIA analyst Douglas Freeman briefs an agent. A suicide attack kills the agent and 18 civilians; the target was high-ranking police official Abbas-i "Abasi" Fawal (Igal Naor), a liaison for the United States who conducts interrogations with techniques amounting to torture, but Fawal is unharmed.
Egyptian-born Anwar El-Ibrahimi is a chemical engineer living in Chicago with his mother, his pregnant wife Isabella, and their young son. He is believed to be linked to known terrorist Rashid by records indicating several calls to his cellphone. Returning from a conference in South Africa, Anwar is detained by American officials and sent to a secret facility near the earlier attack, where he is interrogated and tortured.
Isabella is not informed of her husband’s whereabouts, and all official evidence of his being on the plane at Cape Town International Airport is erased. Freeman, assigned to observe Anwar’s interrogation by Fawal, is doubtful of his guilt, but CIA superior Corrine Whitman insists such treatments are necessary to save potential victims of terrorism.
Isabella travels to Washington, D.C. to ask friend Alan Smith, an aide to Senator Hawkins, to find her missing husband. He informs her that Anwar failed to board the plane in Cape Town, but she shows him her husband's credit card purchase at the in-flight duty-free shop, confirming he was on the flight. Smith pieces together details of Anwar's detention but is unable to convince Senator Hawkins or Corrine Whitman, who ordered the rendition, to release Anwar or acknowledge his imprisonment.
Hawkins tells Smith to let the matter go, as public debate on extraordinary rendition would complicate the senator’s bill before Congress. His sympathetic secretary tips Isabella off that Senator Hawkins will be visiting. She confronts him and Corrine Whitman before being led out by security, only to go into labour in the hallway.
Under torture, Anwar eventually confesses that he advised a man named Rashid on chemicals to enhance explosives and was promised $40,000. Freeman suspects a false confession, confirmed when the names Anwar gives are traced by Interpol and draw a blank. A quick Google search reveals the names belong to an Egyptian soccer team. Freeman approaches the Minister of the Interior with this finding, questioning why a man with a $200,000 salary would risk his life for $40,000. When discussing the value of intelligence gathered through torture, Freeman quotes from The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare: "I fear you speak upon the rack, Where men enforced do speak anything."
Freeman persuades the minister to release Anwar, sending him back to America via a clandestine ship to (Malaga and Madrid) Spain, then a flight to Chicago, ignoring Lee Mayer's (Freeman's boss) frantic orders to hand him back to Fawal and knowing he will probably be branded as insubordinate. Freeman also leaks the torture details to the press, igniting a worldwide scandal and likely ending his career. Anwar returns home and shares a tearful reunion with Isabella, his son, and their newborn baby.
In a parallel storyline, Abasi Fawal's daughter Fatima runs away with her boyfriend Khalid. Abasi learns Khalid's late brother was an inmate at his prison.
Fatima learns that Khalid belongs to a terrorist group, and discovers a notebook with pictures: Khalid and his brother brandishing AK-47s; a grief-stricken Khalid standing over his brother's corpse; her father; and a statement that Khalid will avenge his brother.
Realising that her father, responsible for the death of Khalid's brother, is about to be assassinated by Khalid, she runs to the town square and confronts Khalid. He hesitates, and is killed by the attack’s organizers; he releases the dead man's switch, and Fatima is killed in the explosion at the beginning of the film.
Abasi rushes to Khalid's apartment and discovers Khalid's grandmother grieving the loss of her grandsons and Fatima. Abasi realizes his daughter died trying to protect him.
The phone record implicating Anwar remains unexplained. It is mentioned that phones are often passed off to avoid tracing; the DVD extras explain a subplot on this concept that was cut from the film. Director Gavin Hood stated in an interview that the ambiguity of Anwar’s involvement was deliberate, to let the viewer decide whether the possibility of his guilt justified kidnapping and torture.