To get around that pesky Geneva Convention, the Clinton administration introduced a policy of ‘extraordinary rendition’, whereby suspected terrorists are sneaked off to be ‘questioned’ in countries with a more relaxed attitude to human rights.

Unsurprisingly, the dirty little secret is out and the world’s filmmakers have pounced on it, from countless documentary makers to Michael Winterbottom’s Road to Guantanamo and recent indie drama Extraordinary Rendition.

But this is the first mainstream movie to throw real money and star-power at the subject. It’s money well spent.

Jake Gyllenhaal is Douglas Freeman, a raw CIA analyst caught up in a suicide bombing in a North African city square. Freeman’s colleague is among the 19 dead, but the bomber fails to take out his target, prison chief Abasi Fawal (Igal Naor).

At the same time, chemical engineer Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is on his way home to his pregnant wife Isabella (Witherspoon) after a business trip to Cape Town.

But on landing in Washington, he is seized and – by order of steely CIA boss Corrinne Whitman (a steely Streep) - bundled onto a plane to be interrogated by Fawal and his experienced inquisitors.

Freeman is assigned to observe, but becomes increasingly convinced of Anwar’s innocence. Fawal, however, is in no mood for mercy. His defiant daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach) has absconded with a streetwise boyfriend, Kamal (Moa Khouas).

As Anwar suffers, so Isabella hits a wall of silence. Her only hope rests with Alan Smith (Sarsgaard), an old friend who now works on Capitol Hill for straight-talking Senator Hawkins (Arkin).

The compelling drama is played by a fine ensemble. Gyllenhaal and Witherspoon take top billing but it’s the lesser lights that shine – particularly Naor, Oukach and Khouas as the people closest to the terrorists’ hotbed.

And though it deals with torture, indoctrination, fanaticism and political skulduggery, Rendition keeps histrionics to a minimum and even shows flashes of grim humour.

“You’re new to this, aren’t you?” asks Whitman of Freeman. “It’s my first torture” is his hash-addled reply.

Liberal-mindedness means that the terror-struck country is never identified (Morocco provides the locations) and it would be ironic to think that Hood and writer Kelley Sane had been forced to come up with such a neat resolution.

But they show deft hands in weaving the story’s threads together before unveiling a wicked twist in its fabric. Thinking about it later you’ll realise it doesn’t have much bearing on the plot, but it’s a wonderful piece of audience wrong-footing nevertheless.

It goes without saying that Rendition is a matter worthy of your utmost attention.

Elliott Noble