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Russell Crowe as Ed Hoffman and Leonardo Di Caprio as Roger Ferris |
Leonardo Di Caprio in Ridley Scott's
Body Of Lies
BODY OF LIES
Directed by Ridley Scott
Certificate 15
THIS contemporary spy-thriller is written by Washington Post journalist David Ignatius.
He has spent his career reporting on the murky goings-on inside the intelligence services in foreign fields. His background is superb for this type of thing and his story cleverly sets a Boy’s Own-style adventure on a stage provided by today’s global war on terror.
But while this makes it feel very real, it also makes you feel guilty to be watching. It’s not trying to give you an angle or insight to help understand what motivates the US and their allies to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, nor of the Islamic jihadists who fight them.
It is meant as entertainment, and, as the opening scene features bombs in Manchester and Sheffield, it’s a bit close to the bone.
The subject matter is so raw – the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are current, and people are risking their lives there each day.
We meet Roger Ferris (Leonardo Di Caprio), an agent on the trail of a terror gang leader. He is well embedded in the Arabic countries he works, speaking the language, understanding and respecting the cultures, and generally doing a fair job of tracking down baddies. But things get complicated for him when a nurse he meets at a medical centre catches his eye.
The storyline works, but the film’s main problem is that we are not persuaded to care about what happens to the leading man. I couldn’t help but think it would be nice if Di Caprio and all the CIA agents and all the terrorists just got together in a fly-blown desert somewhere and went at it in a big old Quentin Tarantino shootout.
Scott’s direction means it is smooth and easy on the eye. He also attempts to make subtle points about the state of the world: we regularly zoom in on Di Caprio as he pegs about shanty towns and slums, watched from 50,000 feet by a spy plane and it sums up the trick Scott is playing. The CIA and their Jordanian allies all wear the most swankiest of suits and drive the swankiest of cars, host meetings in marble-floored offices or plush nightclubs and have a range of ultra expensive gizmos at their fingertips.
While we marvel at the products of the military industrial complex, the poverty of Palestinian refugee camps, the back streets of Jordanian and Afghanistan towns is writ large. All this might be an interesting if some what unoriginal take on how to win the war on terror.
But such an important message is essentially undermined and the fact Di Caprio is very clearly a goodie, despite the US’s trigger-happy policies, while the terrorists are very clearly nothing but vicious murderers.
It doesn’t quite work as a piece of global political comment, and is not quite exciting enough to be a Bond/Bourne thriller. But it is polished and generally plausible. |
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