The complexities of Middle East terrorism haven't just stymied diplomats, they've thrown screenwriters for a loop. Hollywood can't seem to get a solid dramatic grasp on the situation. Last month's "The Kingdom" turned an attack on Americans in Saudi Arabia into a springboard for "Soldier of Fortune" revenge porn, then went contrite and peacenik at the end.

Now comes "Rendition," a preachy bore which argues that the U.S. government ought not to turn over blameless citizens to foreign interrogators who use jumper cables as conversation starters. There's a valid question here, whether sacrificing one suspect's rights is worth potentially saving thousands of lives, but "Rendition" never comes to grips with it.

It opens with one of those sequences of a family so wholesome and happy you know disaster is about to strike. Reese Witherspoon, the pregnant wife of Egyptian-born chemical engineer Omar Metwally, plays soccer with their little boy while awaiting Daddy's return from an overseas conference.

When he fails to step off the plane, she goes to Capitol Hill looking for answers. It takes her eons to learn what we already know. On orders from Meryl Streep, a spy chief, he was seized and rerouted to a nameless North African country on suspicion that he might have been involved in a suicide bombing.

Gavin Hood, who directed the Oscar-winning African crime drama "Tsotsi," operates at low ebb here, creating scenes that pontificate when they ought to thrill. Jake Gyllenhaal, as the CIA station chief overseeing the interrogation, looks on with doleful cow eyes as Metwally is shocked, beaten and half-drowned by Arab cops who seem to regard the "Saw" movies as training videos.

Half a world away, Witherspoon tearfully confronts politicians who would rather turn a blind eye to her husband's plight than hand their opponents a campaign issue. Alan Arkin is good as a senator who views every choice through the prism of political advantage.

But in dramatic terms, "Rendition" is equally cynical. Every moral dilemma is triangulated into the least controversial shape. Gyllenhaal opposes torture not on moral grounds, but pragmatically: It's inefficient. Nothing his character says suggests he'd take a principled stand against torturing an actual conspirator.

At every turn the screenplay turns geopolitics into Lifetime Channel pablum. Streep's justification for torture is that it once averted a bombing in London, where her grandkids live. And the film is ham-handed and shameless in hyping Witherspoon's grief.

Streep plays her part with a cool, wire-taut intensity, but the less-seasoned actors fend for themselves, and generally not well. Gyllenhaal communicates his growing disillusionment by drinking, then takes matters into his own hands in a maneuver of wild improbability.

The film relishes such unlikely surprises, but it's unbelievable in the telling little details, too. Witherspoon, who looks like she's five minutes away from delivering triplets, walks everywhere in three-inch heels. No wonder she's crying all the time.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186

Colin Covertrating: R For Torture/violence and language. • ccovert@startribune.com