According to Kevin Roderick on yesterday's LAObserved, Mark Bowden's October Atlantic cover story on torture, The Dark Art of Interrogation, has been optioned by Jerry Weintraub the veteran producer of all three Karate Kid movies and the remake of Ocean's Eleven and its currently in-production sequel. "The idea is to do this as a character-driven, high-stakes, high-tension thriller that focuses on a mano-a-mano battle and test of the wills," according to Mark Vahradian, a top executive at Weintraub's company.
Setting aside my surprise that someone�anyone�in Hollywood reads the tweedy old Atlantic (I thought they only optioned Bryan Burrough's articles in Vanity Fair), here's the 'nut graph' of this ready-for-the-multiplex character-driven, high-stakes, high-tension article:

All manner of innovative cruelty is still commonplace, particularly in Central and South America, Africa, and the Middle East. Saddam Hussein's police force burned various marks into the foreheads of thieves and deserters, and routinely sliced tongues out of those whose words offended the state. In Sri Lanka prisoners are hung upside down and burned with hot irons. In China they are beaten with clubs and shocked with cattle prods. In India the police stick pins through the fingernails and fingers of prisoners. Maiming and physical abuse are legal in Somalia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Sudan, and other countries that practice sharia; the hands of thieves are lopped off, and women convicted of adultery may be stoned to death. Governments around the world continue to employ rape and mutilation, and to harm family members, including children, in order to extort confessions or information from those in captivity

I don't know about you, but I'm ready for this movie, like, now. It's got thrills, uplift, and moments of great comic relief. Oh, and if they're putting together a soundtrack, I know a little ditty from the Wu-Tang Clan that works. (Then again, if they really want a soundtrack that screams torture, they could get this guy to do what he did on The Hours.)