Review: Body of Lies

Leonardo DiCaprio are Russell Crowe are like the coach and quarterback of the CIA, if by quarterback you mean frazzled field agent who does all the hard stuff while the coach is casually making orders and putting his MVP in potential harm’s way with nary a care to his personal safety nor any other complications it might cause. There’s a job to do, and DiCaprio’s gonna do it for him, ‘coz he’s the guy with the contacts, can speak the language and local knowledge (i.e. Crowe has probably never even been to Iraq, Jordan, or Syria!). Whilst Crowe sits back and watches him from real-time satellite imagery, DiCaprio is setting his sights on a Bin Laden cipher, and has been introduced to the head of Jordanian Intelligence (Mark Strong). This guy’s deeply distrustful of Americans (and capable of being just as ruthless as Crowe) but sees the upside in an alliance between the two Intelligence Agencies, only asking one thing of DiCaprio: not to lie to him. Unfortunately, while DiCaprio (growing somewhat tired and disillusioned with his work- and his superior) is sincere in wanting to uphold that agreement, his rather sly, cynical boss Crowe cares only about the end game. Also factoring into things are a romance between DiCaprio and an Iranian nurse (Golshifteh Farahani), and a plan to create a phony terrorist in order to flush out the real one(!), via a CIA computer whiz (Simon McBurney). Vince Colossimo plays a fellow operative.

 

I don’t usually like this Middle Eastern-set war/terrorism movies (nor CIA movies for that matter), mostly because the real life stuff is too ongoing/distasteful to really make a movie about, at least one that has any entertainment value, or that I would want to see (And yes I’m referring to you, “Syriana”. Yawn). Hell, I’m not even all that interested in the subject, shameful as it may be to admit such a thing. But this 2008 Ridley Scott (“Gladiator”, “Alien”, “Blade Runner”, “Black Rain”) film, despite looking and sounding more like a flashy Tony Scott film (“Enemy of the State”, “Man on Fire”, “Spy Game”), makes a damn good fist of being informative, interesting, and entertaining. It’s more interested in thrilling you than in solving the problems in the Middle East, but it’s not empty-headed or politically/ culturally offensive, either.

 

The film gets better as it moves along (especially when DiCaprio comes up with an ingenious plan) and benefits from excellent performances by Crowe, and Strong (the British actor is very convincing), as well as solid ones by DiCaprio (still a teeny bit baby-voiced but committed and never truly overpowered by the others in the cast), Farahani (in an ultimately predictable role, but she’s good), and McBurney (who looks an awful lot like Roman Polanski, if you ask me).

 

Crowe’s scenery-chewing seems to work against the film’s tone at times (and he literally looks as if he did eat the scenery, putting on quite a bit of weight) but the film would be significantly lesser without him, and the film’s best scenes involve the interplay between him and DiCaprio (wherein we see Crowe sending his kids to school whilst receiving a profane arse-chewing by DiCaprio via one of those headset/ear phone thingies). The film really does a good job in setting up the bureaucratic fat cats as heartless bastards happy to let the grunts like DiCaprio do all the dirty work in the field, whilst they sit and watch on satellite TV screens safe from any real harm. And yet, they’re the ones doing all the decision-making! Not that DiCaprio is Mr. Morality here, after all it’s he who comes up with the plan to nab the numero uno terrorist by setting up a mild-mannered accountant who just happens to be Muslim (But he does feel bad about it, so that’s something!).

 

Most people seem to feel the DiCaprio-Farahani romance is a bit tacked on, but at least it was interesting and different, and I rather liked the dinner scene with them and her protective sister. Less enjoyable were the few scenes with Aussie irritation Colossimo, though I was awfully glad to see him get bitch-slapped by DiCaprio at one point. Bravo, young man! Make this guy an honorary Aussie already! (BTW, anyone else find it odd that Colossimo, one of the stars of “The Wog Boy”, plays a guy named ‘Skip’ here? I’m just sayin’....).

 

Nothing that “24” didn’t do on a weekly basis on TV, but this film was a lot more action-packed and less complicated than I was expecting and I quite enjoyed it overall. Not sure how plausible any of the technology used here by Crowe, is though. Based on a novel by David Ignatius (apparently a Washington Post columnist), the screenplay by William Monahan (Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven”, and Martin Scorsese’s slightly overrated “The Departed”, also starring DiCaprio) doesn’t break any new ground, but it keeps you interested and far from bored, which not many other films of this type have done for me. In fact, it’s more spy oriented than it is war-oriented.

 

Rating: B-