BODY OF LIES

“BODY OF LIES” (Leonardo DiCaprio & Russell Crowe)
For the first 45 minutes or so of ‘Body Of Lies’ I felt like I was stuck in another ‘Syriana’; just a convoluted mess of a movie that shifts from scene to scene by telling us nothing more than the name of the city/building in which the segment we’re about to watch takes place. Discerning the bad guys from the good guys is nearly impossible & characters are introduced via quickie bio’s on a computer monitor, inserted into the storyline briefly & then shown as corpses that have been dumped like yesterday’s trash... But one thing kept this film from falling into that whirlwind of confusion – DiCaprio’s Roger Ferris is in practically every scene – he’s the constant that keeps the plot from becoming too bogged down with too many, “Who was that guy?” “Why did they kill him?” & “Just what in the heck is going on here?” questions.
Ferris is a CIA operative working the entire Middle East; wherever his contact in Washington needs him – that’s where he goes. Crowe plays the contact, Ed Hoffman; an overweight family man with a graying crew cut (Is this where Russell’s character from L.A. Confidential finally wound up?) who is constantly on the phone with Ferris. He drops the kids off at soccer practice while listening to his agent in the field call him 3 and 4 syllabled filthy names for not protecting someone who helped them – thus ending up in the morgue or a pile of garbage. Some accomplices are used without their knowledge & are placed in harms way by the ‘good guys’. & when they turn up missing, Crowe’s Hoffman can just shrug it off as a casualty of war, while DiCaprio’s Ferris must live with the consequences since he’s in the one being shot at & held accountable for Hoffman’s heartless decisions.
The film begins to make sense with the arrival of Mark Strong as the head of Jordan’s CIA counterpart, Hani Salaam. Strong, looking uncannily like Andy Garcia, plays the role exceptionally well; you’re never sure if he’s on ‘our’ side – ‘their’ side – or the most likely conclusion – he has his own agenda & you’re never sure what that entails... One thing is made perfectly clear, Salaam is not a man who want to have catch you in a lie – Even knowing this, Ferris decides to act on his own & runs the risk of being caught telling a whopper... This is where the movie switches from ‘at least I understand what’s going on now’ – to – ‘& not only that, it’s becoming an intriguing story’.
The biggest drawback to ‘Body Of Lies’ is the fact that most of Crowe & DiCaprio’s conversations take place over the phone – as the best scenes from an acting standpoint are when they are standing face to face, & there’s only a handful of those.
A love-interest is ‘tacked-on’ simply for plot reasons – Since Ferris hops from city to city & from partner to partner, he has no friends – no one that he would sacrifice anything to save, so Golshifteh Farahani (pronounced Shia Ioan LeBeouf Gruffudd) is introduced as Aisha, a nurse that tends to Ferris’s wounds after he is bitten by a rabid dog. When his cover is blown & the proverbial feces hits the fan, Ferris is forced to give himself up to the terrorist he’s been tracking in the hopes of saving her life after being photographed with him.
Everything ties together in the end & the finale is expertly written – from the way the terrorists ‘kidnap’ Ferris so that the CIA can’t follow him with their satellites – to the interrogation of Ferris by the ‘Bin Laden’ of this story. If you’ve paid attention to what was going on in the confusing beginning, you understand what happens at the end.
It took a long time for me to appreciate Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘style’ of acting but he has hit three home runs in a row with this, “Blood Diamond” & “The Departed”. Not that he hasn’t been in other excellent films (“The Aviator” & “Gangs Of New York” come to mind) but he’s never impressed me with his acting ability until recently – the kid is a bona fide movie star now. Unlike Tom Cruise, he can go head to head with a Russell Crowe & hold his own, instead of being embarrassed by looking amateurish next to a Paul Newman (Color Of Money) or Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men)
Russell Crowe’s performance isn’t that impressive but only due to the fact that he speaks most of his lines into a telephone that seems to be permanently glued in his ear – he shines when he’s in the same room with DiCaprio (& Strong) & even when he’s foiled by the bad guys & loses track of Ferris’ whereabouts, he delivers the words, “Sorry, kid,” with just a touch of actual regret & remorse – Yet you still get the feeling that he’s more concerned with who he will be able to get to replace Ferris in the field than he is with his fellow CIA agent’s safety...