Rendition

CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is briefing a newly arrived CIA agent in a square in a country in North Africa when a suicide attack kills the latter and 18 other people. The target was a high ranking army official, Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor). Liaising with the United States, Fawal's tasks include conducting interrogations, and even overseeing the application of techniques amounting to torture. As chance would have it, Fawal escapes the explosion unscathed. While North Africa is mentioned, no specific country is given: as explained on the director's commentary, the director did not want any country singled out. (Indeed, certain members of the international crew of the film might have suffered recriminations had a specific country been identifiable.)

Egyptian-born Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer who lives in Chicago with his pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), their young son and his mother, is linked to a violent organization by telephone records indicating known terrorist Rashid placed several calls to Anwar's cell phone. While returning to the United States from a conference in South Africa, he is detained by American officials and sent to a secret detention facility near the location of the suicide attack depicted earlier, where he is interrogated and tortured. Isabella is not informed.

For lack of more experienced staff, Freeman is assigned the task of observing the interrogation of Anwar, whose interrogator is none other than Fawal. After Freeman briefly questions and tortures Anwar himself, he is convinced of Anwar's innocence. However, his boss, Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) insists that the detention continue, justifying such treatments as necessary to save thousands from becoming victims of terrorism.

Growing worried, Isabella travels to Washington DC, where she meets up with an old friend, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard) who now works as an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), and begs him to find out what has happened to her husband. Initially, she is informed that there had been a mistake in South Africa and Anwar wasn't on the flight, but Isabella presents Anwar's credit card record, that shows that Anwar had purchased something in the in-flight Duty Free shop, which confirmed that he had been on the flight. Smith slowly pieces together details of Anwar's detention. He is unable to convince the senator, nor Corrine Whitman, who had ordered the rendition to give proper details of the detention, nor to release him. After the senator advises him to let it go, as he is currently fighting to have a bill passed in Congress and it is not the right time to start debating an extraordinary rendition, Smith advises Isabella to get a very good lawyer he knows on the case, but she refuses. Upon hearing the confrontation from her office, his sympathetic secretary quietly tips Isabella off on when Whitman will be next in the office. The next day, Isabella confronts Whitman, but she simply pretends not to have a clue what Isabella is talking about and a frustrated Isabella storms out of the office, only to go into labour in the hallway.

Eventually, Anwar confesses to have advised on how to make more powerful bombs, and to have been promised $40,000 in return. Freeman, suspicious that it is a false confession, asks Anwar where the money is and Anwar's response is that it was supposed to be delivered to him in South Africa, but the courier failed to show up. Freeman's suspicions are confirmed when he has the names Anwar gives traced by Interpol and draws up a blank. He then Googles the names and finds out that they are the names of the Egyptian football team from the year Anwar left Egypt. He also expresses doubt as to whether Anwar would be willing to put his life, family and job in danger for $40,000 when he earns $200,000 a year in his job. He quotes Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in a discussion on the value of intelligence gathered through torture:

Without the consent of his superiors, and not caring what happens to him, Freeman gets a warrant for Anwar's release and sends him back to America via a clandestine ship to Spain. When Lee Mayers calls him to tell him to give Anwar back to Abasi Fawal, he simply hangs up. Freeman, angered by the injustice Anwar has suffered from, then leaks the details of Anwar's detention to the American press, to the horror of Whitman and Senator Hawkins.

Another story line is shown in parallel: Abasi's daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach), has run away from home with her boyfriend Khalid (Moa Khouas). Khalid shows Fatima a picture of his brother, but does not tell her what has happened to him. Abasi is told that Khalid's brother was an inmate at his prison and later died. Fatima is unaware that Khalid is a member of a terrorist group until his friends are arrested at a planned march and he leads her to the terrorist group's base. Near the end of the movie, Fatima discovers a notebook that contains pictures of Khalid and his brother together, showing that they were extremely close, as well as a picture of the two brandishing AK-47s, then some pictures of a grief-stricken Khalid standing over his brother's corpse, some pictures of her father and finally a statement saying that Khalid is doing a deed in revenge for his brother's death. Realizing that Khalid's brother met his death at the hands of her father and that Khalid is about to assassinate him, she runs off. It is then revealed that the entire storyline took place before the suicide attack. At the town square Fatima begs him not to do it, arguing that the target is her father. After removing the pin of his detonator he hesitates, and is therefore killed by the organizers of the attack. As a result he releases the handle of the detonator, and the bomb explodes, killing Fatima also. In the present, Abasi rushes to Khalid's apartment and discovers his grandmother, who is stricken with grief over the loss of both her grandchildren and Fatima. Abasi then realises that his daughter died trying to protect him and is filled with grief himself.

The record of a phone call supposedly made by Rashid to Anwar is not explained in the film. However, earlier it was mentioned that phones are sometimes passed on from one person to another (the DVD extras explain that there was a subplot dropped from the film that elaborated on this concept). Yet despite this reasonable doubt the CIA officials refused to release him. It turned out that in South Africa, while Anwar's phone was off, there had been a call to it from an unknown person.

For the scenes of Abasi's private life it is not always clear to which storyline they belong, that before or after the explosion. Abasi learns about Fatima's death only a week later.