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Jake Gyllenhaal
Rendition
"Are you the American?" the prisoner asks. And the trickiest thing about Jake Gyllenhaal's work as a newly promoted CIA analyst in Rendition is that he's playing exactly that: not just an American but the American, our collective national stand-in onscreen. The movie, in which the CIA whisks Reese Witherspoon's Egyptian-born husband off to some unspecified North African country after intercepting a call to his cell phone from a known terrorist, means to explore the ethical justifiability of detainment and torture. But Gyllenhaal's character is no Jack Bauer improvising electroshock devices from desk lamps and ordering the suspect to start talking, now! He's permitted only to observe the interrogations and pose the occasional question, as a courtesy -- which means that Gyllenhaal spends much of Rendition standing in the corner of a dark room, watching as some poor soul gets beaten, doused, and fried. It's a near-silent performance, apart from some minor heroics near the end, and most actors would likely have felt the need to signal their disapproval to the audience via exaggerated winces. Gyllenhaal refrains, allowing us to project our own turbulent, conflicted emotions onto his placid expression. Knowing when to do nothing is one of the least appreciated of an actor's skills; here's one who's learned it early.
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