Film Review

09 January 2009 13:02 BST

Body of Lies

Directed by Ridley Scott, out now, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani, running time 128 mins.

In a nutshell…

Flashy, fast and flawed.

What's it all about?

Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the best man US Intelligence has on the ground, in places where human life is worth no more than the information it can get you. In operations that take him around the globe, Ferris' next breath often depends on the voice at the other end of a secure phone line-CIA veteran Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe).

Strategising from a laptop in the suburbs, Hoffman is on the trail of an emerging terrorist leader who has orchestrated a campaign of bombings while eluding the most sophisticated intelligence network in the world. To lure the terrorist out into the open, Ferris will have to penetrate his murky world, but the closer Ferris gets to the target, the more he discovers that trust is both a dangerous commodity and the only one that will get him out alive.


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Who's in it?

There's Leonardo DiCaprio, once a heartthrob and star of the biggest box office success of all time (you know the one - boat, iceberg, crash, if Kate Winslet would just budge up and make room on the floating door there'd be no problem… ), now a committed environmental campaigner, Oscar-nominated actor and Martin Scorsese's muse.

Russell Crowe was immortalised in South Park as a violent Antipodean committing to fighting across the globe, but while his temper's certainly got him in trouble, he's better known for his Oscar-nominated performances in the likes of The Insider, Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind (winning the best actor prize for Gladiator).

Body of Lies marks director Ridley Scott's fourth collaboration but as well filming regularly with the New Zealand-born actor, he's also changed the face of cinematic history with the likes of Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator. Future projects include a futuristic version of The Odyssey and a film based on Monopoly. Seriously.

As an example…

"F*****g c***sucker. How do you expect me to run an operation, when you're running a side operation that f***s up my own?" - Roger Ferris

"You Americans are incapable of secrets because of your democracy." - Hani





Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars

Not a hope. With material this inflammatory, it would always have been unlikely that the Academy would go anywhere near it, but given that this remains a competently-made, well-acted and reasonably engaging thriller, and little else, it'll journey to DVD without much hope of a nomination at any award ceremony going.

What the others say

"Body of Lies is big and bombastic, confused and irritable - a 20th-century blockbuster struggling to adapt (too little, too late) to a 21st-century terrain." - Xan Brooks, Guardian

"Despite the immaculate production values, the satire is so unspeakably crude that it ceases to matter. A shame. Scott has been an instrumental director in the Hollywood evolution of war films. But Body of Lies is a one-note rant." - James Christopher, Times

So is it any good?

It's not bad. There are some genuinely thrilling set-pieces, handled with the attention to detail you'd expect from Scott and with the book based on former political correspondent David Ignatius' book of the same name, it's fair to assume that the realisation of CIA operational procedure is pretty close to the truth.

DiCaprio's intense and wiry - though his odd non-regional twang feels forced - while Crowe again proves he's more than comfortable in roles that permit him to sit around on an increasingly lardy arse - Ed Hoffman seems the man The Insider's Jeffrey Wigand might have become with a bit more gumption. And despite resembling Dimitar Berbatov, Strong is superb, never verging into parody with his Jordanian accent, and hinting at menace beneath his veneer of politeness.


But for all the technical and thespian talent on show, it's hard to shake off the sense that Body of Lies is basically an airport novel that's landed in the lap of an award-winning director and had a big budget thrown at it.

When the oh-so-predictable love interest for DiCaprio turns up and you find yourself screaming: 'This is boring, get back to the action!', you know you're watching a film that would get shot on operations for being too brash and bolshy.

7/10

Lewis Bazley

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