Sunday, October 12, 2008
A+E, Movies, Reviews

Spy game

‘Body of Lies’ goes for cheap thrills

BY STEVE MURRAY

 “Body of Lies” is a load of bull. Exciting bull, sometimes—director Ridley Scott seems incapable of making a boring movie—but its mix of ripped-from-the-headlines scenarios and ham-fisted fiction veers on the queasy-making. Plus, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe deliver two of their weakest performances.

DiCaprio plays CIA operative Roger Ferris, working in the Middle East trying to track terrorists—especially bin Laden-like bigwig Al-Saleem (Alon Abutbul), responsible for a series of martyrdom bombings. While Ferris gathers info on the ground, his boss Ed Hoffman (Crowe) looks down, literally. He keeps an aerial eye on Ferris’ doings via a drone, back at CIA HQ in Langley, Va.

Ferris’ M.O. is to insinuate himself into the social fabric in Jordan and Iraq and develop long-term relationships with people he thinks could lead him to terrorist cells. Hoffman, on the other hand, wants instant results. He changes the game plan without warning, sending in soldiers prematurely and blowing Ferris’ work (and credibility).

The movie cuts between Ferris in arid desert cities and Hoffman in the lush environs of his Virginia home. The contrast between earnest, angry grunt and slick, smarmy executive verges on a comedy-of-errors approach to the war on terrorism, and the movie develops a predictable back-and-forth momentum.

Things pick up when Ferris enlists the aid of Hani (Mark Strong), head of Jordan’s covert operations. Hani agrees to help Ferris capture a suspected terrorist safe house, but only if the CIA agent vows never to lie to him. (That’s not a smart promise to make, since Ferris by now knows his boss Hoffman specializes in deception.)

Actress Golshifteh Farahani, a lovely presence, turns up as a Muslim nurse and implausible love interest for Ferris. Mainly, she’s there to be a woman-in-peril bargaining chip to be used against the agent—and partly to offset countless shots of Middle Eastern extras as sinister “others.”  

It’s a comedown for Scott, who sought balance between the Christian and Muslim characters in “Kingdom of Heaven.” In its depiction of Ferris and Hoffman’s different approaches to the war on terror, the movie pretends to be a complex look at the issues. But it winds up being pretty black-and-white, and tasteless, too. When a character is tortured, threatened with beheading and taunted with “Welcome to Guantanamo,” the movie topples into a quick and sleazy kind of sensationalism that tries to get cheap thrills out of political topicality.

It doesn’t help that the acting is as subtle as the explosions. DiCaprio spends half the movie screaming into the phone, while Crowe—pudgy and gray-haired—tries on an accent that sounds a lot like Foghorn Leghorn. The only actor who comes through unscathed is Strong, whose Hani is palpably smarter, more dangerous and ultimately much more interesting than the leads. 2 STARS