Crowe's not the one who has to unload what little political sermonizing "Body of Lies" allows itself. Crowe has the right idea, in addition to all the fun: Just throw it away, throw it away and pretty soon you build yourself a clever characterization by indirection. On another track, DiCaprio's romance with Farahani, replacing the novel's more conventional triangle involving the spy's wife back home and an Anglo abroad, plays like second-shelf Graham Greene.ĭiCaprio's solid, though I wonder if a real CIA agent could get away with looking so earnest every second. The high-tech visuals are designed to entice an audience not interested in geopolitics or moral issues. I'm sorry, what were we talking about?) And partly it's because two or three different sorts of pictures are jockeying for dominance within this one. Satellites circling the globe transmit digital images from thousands of miles away, while fake identities are created and disseminated on a laptop someplace else, and Hoffman plots America's next move.Īn awful lot happens in "Body of Lies," Why does it leave you feeling a little lost? Partly it's a matter of narrative confusion. Over and over we're shown what Ferris is up to from high above, as he deals and double-deals shadowy terrorists, or canoodles with his Iranian-Jordanian nurse friend, played by Golshifteh Farahani.
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Ferris, by contrast, is tortured, shot at and morally clouded - he doesn't like the collateral damage his latest assignment is racking up, and he never knows if he's about to be hung out to dry by his employers.ĭirector Scott knows how to wrestle complicated story lines involving many geographical hot spots, and he certainly enjoys the high-tech toys and surveillance equipment of modern warfare. The head of Jordanian intelligence, played by a sleek, cold Mark Strong, brings similar strengths to his line of work. The man is good at his job, pleasantly ruthless about it and completely unflappable. The most interesting thing about this slick but frustrating picture is the way it puts Crowe's Hoffman at the center of our mixed feelings. Crowe's Hoffman spends much of the film on the phone doing mundane domestic activities (watching his kid's soccer match, hanging out at home) while chatting up DiCaprio's Roger Ferris, setting up the next deadly game of deception designed to entrap an Osama bin Laden-style terrorist. It begins with a botched but deadly terrorist bombing in Manchester, England, and zips around the globe from there, sticking mostly to the Middle East. The film is the latest collaboration between Crowe and director Ridley Scott. Monahan adapts the novel by Washington Post writer David Ignatius. Royally profane invective in "The Departed." His dialogue has the virtue of simply being fun to deliver,Īlthough in "Body of Lies" the mood is more grim, and the story is vexingly Byzantine. ") Monahan won an Oscar for his richly brocaded cat-and-mouse games and (Elsewhere Crowe's Ed Hoffman begins a Nixonian smoke screen of an explanation Then, inscrutably, he adds: "I watched that 'Poseidon.'" Played by Leonardo DiCaprio, about the flight. Getting off a plane inĪmman, Jordan, Crowe - who gained 50 pounds for the role - is asked by his weary, wary man in the Middle East,
"Body of Lies," tosses off one of screenwriter William Monahan's nuttier non-sequiturs. People forget this because technically he's a movie star.įor example: Take the way Crowe, who plays a Central Intelligence Agency spymaster in the busy new thriller Russell Crowe is one of the wittiest character actors in movies.