Rated R for strong violence including some torture, and for language throughout.
128 Minutes

Directed By: Ridley Scott
Written By: William Monaghan
Staring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani, Ali Suliman, Oscar Isaac, and Alon Abutbul

Ed Hoffman doesn’t know s**t until he steals it from the guy on the ground and that’s me. -Roger Ferris

Synopsis

Roger Ferris uncovers a lead on a major terrorist leader suspected to be operating out of Jordan.

Review

As usual Ridley Scott delivers a suspenseful, poignant tale, with compelling character’s and the haunting evil of terrorism.  Body Of Lies was an intense film with a powerful script adapted by William Monaghan (The Departed), and the majority translated to screen by the very credible Leonardo DiCaprio.  With the star power in the acting, writing, and directing department this film conveyed a movie that teetered a very debatable topic with good old reliable action.

Dicaprio’s character, Roger Ferris, is the character the core of this complicated story of espionage focuses on.  There are very few actors with the range and ability to commit that DiCaprio has, and in Body Of Lies, he does a supreme job of making his character, who is actually the least complicated or interesting, worth watching and having genuine concern for.  Though his character’s chameleon behavior and ability to blend in the Middle Eastern world was implicit, his own American soft southern dialect was all over the place.  Leo could have pulled that off.  He’s done a hundred different dialects, including his nearly perfect South African accent in Blood Diamond.  Why he stumbled here, I don’t quite know.  DiCaprio’s performance was also shadowed by two others.  Russell Crowe played the ambiguous head of “Operation get the Terrorists” (that’s the gist of what I surmise their government faction would be called) named Hoffman, who spent the extent of the film on a cell phone, driving his kids around, looking annoyed threw giant glasses and a potruding  gut.  The most compelling character was Mark Strong who played the head of Jordanian Intelligence, Hani Pasha.  I can’t recall seeing this actor in anything before, but I will remember the name from now on.  His handsome features that share a likeness with Andy Garcia, his smooth persona, and deadly confidence made his character a total wild card.  On the surface he seemed to be the easiest to sum up, but was clearly the most complex character in the film, which essentially became a necessary evil for the ending to come together.

This film was a constant reflection of who the character’s were and how their choices affected things.  Everything that happened to these three men had a huge impact on the turn of events the story took.  For a bit the plot seemed to be as deceptive as Hoffman (Crowe).  For the first forty minutes, there was a lack of knowing if anyone was actually telling the truth.  What is actually clever about this movie and the script is that it does constantly keep you guessing.  The story itself is not as deep as it seems to be, but the illusion the character’s present to one another is what keeps the film on it’s toes, and Ridley Scott’s great ability to distract with a highly intense action scene to throw you off the path of deliberating the plot too much.  The fundamentals of the story may be simplistic in nature, but the screenplay is so crafty in it’s distractions and deceptions that it is actually living it’s own title. The film is proficient in avoiding it’s own weaknesses.  That in itself awards applause.

There were a few issues I had outside DiCaprio’s would be, wouldn’t be southern accent.  There are some “final moments” that are a bit cliche, and the ending is a bit too all smiles considering the content.  I felt like the last fifteen minutes or so weren’t honest with what the story told up to that point.  It’s not as though Ridley Scott or  William Monaghan has shied away from traumatic endings.  Gladiator is one of the few movies my husbands cries at the end when Maximus sees the field, and The Departed just murdered everybody, so I expected more sacrifice, especially since the two most notable leads are also famous for dying at the ends of their films.  That aspect was a disappoinment for me.

I heard a lot of movie fans say they didn’t get what “political” or “humanitarian” point this film had to offer that other movies hadn’t already pointed out, and frankly that annoys me because I found it to be quite obvious.  It was clearly Russell Crowe’s character Hoffman.  Essentially, he was arm chair quarter backing a war on terrorism he didn’t fully understand. He’d never lived any of it first hand, therefore he never made the sacrifices.  He was busy living his happy and comfortable suburban life, with family that may have been deceived that Daddy was a CEO or lawyer.  There was nothing personally at stake for him to sacrifice, and Body Of Lies was ALL ABOUT SACRIFICE.  Ferris sacrificed every part of who he was every minute of his existence.  These two very different men had the same goal at hand, but two completely different understandings.  At the end of the day, the point of the movie was that to really understand a situation, you had to live it and breath it.  Hoffman never really understood it, and that’s why he never succeeded, and though Ferris may have succeeded to an extent, his success came at such a high price, it was hard to comprehend if it was worth it.  I found it to be incredibly poignant and relevant in the world today.

Body Of Lies, had a lot of intellect to it.  There was a great mix of action with suspense-thriller combined at all the right moments.   Scott knows how to intermingle substance, reality, and fiction together in a way few directors understand.  This was not his best attempt at that feat, but it was miles ahead of what most of his peers do.  I thoroughly enjoyed this film despite some of it’s negatives.  A movie has to be pretty good if  can forgive such a Hollywood ending, and it is forgivable, because the rest actually had enough to say that I cared, plus was lucky enough to be entertained.  The Verdict?  Scott, Monaghan, DiCaprio, and Crowe didn’t let me down.

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