To torture or not to torture? That is the moral question – albeit simplified – at the center of “Rendition,” a political thriller directed by Gavin Hood.

“Rendition” refers to the American policy of secretly moving suspected terrorists to a foreign location for interrogation, an option to be used in extreme circumstances but – as one of the film’s characters suggests -frequently has been used since 9/11.

The film essentially plays out a kind of “what if” scenario, in which an Egyptian national named Anwar El-Ibrahimi becomes linked to a terrorist bombing in North Africa that kills a CIA operative.

Married to an American (Reese Witherspoon) with a young child and another on the way, family man El-Ibrahimi also is a chemical engineer who may have a working knowledge of increasing the destructive power of terrorist explosives.

On a return conference trip from South Africa, CIA personnel secretly whisk El- Ibrahimi away and delete his return flight information. When he fails to explain received cell phone calls traced to a Middle-east terrorist group, top-tier CIA director Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) gives the order for rendition.

El-Ibrahimi is sent to a dungeon-like facility to be questioned by torture expert Abasi Fawal, the same man whose life was the target of the explosion.

Meanwhile, a newbie CIA operative (Jake Gyllenhaal) suddenly finds himself thrust into the position of lead investigator into the same bombing that killed his superior.

His real duty, however, has little to do with gathering evidence and more to do with passively observing the horrendous beatings, electrocutions and other tactics inflicted on El-Ibrahimi, who continues to provide no answers.

A Princeton graduate barely into adulthood, Gyllenhaal’s character (in perhaps the driest performance of the actor’s career) already is lost in disillusionment.

Other story threads weave together throughout the film.

El-Ibrahimi’s wife enlists the help of a senator’s assistant (Peter Sarsgaard) to find out what happened to her missing husband. The matter is then brought to the attention of the senator, well-played by Alan Arkin, who must decide whether or not to pursue what could be a political hot potato.

The imposing torturer Fawal becomes frantic as he struggles to locate his alienated daughter who has fallen in confused love with a Muslim boy, a side plot that turns back on the central event of the film.

To say the film questions torture may be untrue, as the film clearly has its own answer. The ends simply do not justify the means.

While some critics have derided the story as being arbitrary and manipulative, the drama is engaging and the issues at hand are fair game.

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Flynn Espe is an EO reporter.