Next/Death Sentence/Rendition (DVD)

Triple bill of US film thrillers. In 'Next' (2007), a Vegas magician is sought by the government to help prevent a looming disaster. Cris 'Frank Cadillac' Johnson (Nicholas Cage) is a Las Vegas stage magician with the unique ability to foresee the future. This talent he keeps hidden, instead performing the usual rabbit/hat material. As a child he was subjected to endless tests and examinations as to the origins of his baffling talent/affliction so that he has developed a deep aversion to authority. However, when a terrorist group threatens to let off a huge nuclear device in Los Angeles, FBI agent Callie Ferris (Julianne Moore) ferrets the unlikely seer out, determined that Cadillac's anti-authority streak will not come before the lives of the people of California. She embarks upon a campaign to ensnare him using all her womanly wiles. Unfortunately, two French terrorists also show up at the casino Cris works at, wanting to know more about his powers of vision. In 'Death Sentence' (2007), Nick Hume (Bacon) is a mild-mannered executive with a perfect life until one gruesome night he witnesses something that changes him forever. His family falls victim to a vicious attack perpetrated by a gang as part of their initiation ritual and his son is brutally murdered. When Hume is failed by the judicial system he vows to track every person involved in the crime, and embarks on a vigilante mission which not only sets off a police investigation, but starts a cycle of violence that draws his whole family into the politics of the gang who perpetrated the crime. Hume eventually comes to the disturbing conclusion that no length is too great when protecting his family. Finally, in 'Rendition' (2007), Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), a CIA analyst working in North Africa, starts to question his assignment when he witnesses the brutal interrogation of an Egyptian-American by secret North African police. When Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwalley), an Egyptian-American chemical engineer whose family emigrated to the United States when he was a boy, is suspected of a terrorist act, his pregnant wife, Isabella El-Ibrahimi (Reese Witherspoon), does everything she can to find him when he seemingly disappears during a flight from South Africa to Washington, DC. She enlists the help of an old college friend, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), who uncovers the shocking fact that Anwar has been shipped off to a third-world country for interrogation on the orders of Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep), the CIA's head of the anti-terrorism unit. Isabella and Douglas team up to try to secure Anwar's release from a secret detention facility somewhere in the Middle East.