This year’s second and third place winners of the Boston Marathon were both Moroccan!  Although Kenyan Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot won first place, Abderrahime Bouramdane of Fez came in second, with Khalid El Boumlili finishing in third place.  Both men are Olympic hopefuls.

Unfortunately,  no Moroccan women placed in the top group this year.

Extraordinary rendition: An appalling practice often performed by the United States in these post-9/11 times. For those of you not clued in by now, extraordinary rendition refers to when the U.S. (or someone else, but usually the U.S.) extracts (kidnaps) someone (often a U.S. citizen) to secretly (Rice denies this exists) torture him (nearly always a him) in a foreign country.

Rendition: A film starring Reese Witherspoon, Omar Metwally, and Jake Gyllenhaal in which Metwally’s character (an Egyptian-American U.S. permanent resident) is extracted upon arrival into the U.S. and extradited to “North Africa” to be tortured into admission of involvement in terrorism. The movie was filmed primarily in Marrakesh, Morocco.

The good:

• Witherspoon gave a heartbreaking performance as the wife of Metwally’s character.
• Metwally, who was nominated for a Tony a couple years ago, was also very good.
• Filming in Morocco boosts the economy.
• Making a major Hollywood blockbuster film about extraordinary rendition can only help to open the eyes of ignorant Americans.

The bad:

• Although it was filmed in Morocco, references were only made to “North Africa.”
• Tons of inaccuracies - women wore their hijab Iranian-style (halfway back on the head), a reporter on Al Jazeera was shown wearing hijab (would never happen), the “North African” characters spoke Fus’ha.
• The Moroccan torturer (played by Yigal Naor, who will soon play Saddam Hussein in a mini-series) was shown as the bad guy, while Gyllenhaal’s character was shown as the good guy.
• Two “North African jihadi” characters were shown in a photo holding machine guns (would never happen in Morocco) and wearing what looked like Chechen headbands.

The ugly:

• Meryl Streep’s acting.

While I’m sure there had to have been a reason for the ambiguity of the country, to the enlightened it would appear that the fact-checkers didn’t do their jobs. Also, if ambiguity was desired, then why film in Djemaa al-Fna?

The only thing that truly pleased me was the general plot, which interwove the Metwally/Witherspoon storyline with one involving the Moroccan torturer’s family…but I’m not going to spoil anything for you.

Basically - if you’re not educated on all things MENA, then watch with skepticism. Otherwise, be sure to giggle when Gyllenhaal’s character arrogantly stands up against that of the Moroccan torturer.

And on one other, slightly silly point - at least three of the actors were also in Munich, the somewhat lame Spielberg film released in 2005. Is there a shortage of multi-lingual Arab actors or something?

Last week, I was invited by Nadia Gergis to join the blogging team at Arabisto.com, a site for news and commentary on the Middle East.  I am proud to have been invited, and excited to be able to write about the rest of the MENA region (rather than just Morocco) for a change.  Please check out my first post, on Muslim women and Vitamin D deficiency.