October 10, 2008 'Body of Lies' stars Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Golshifteh Farahani
Russell Crowe is one of the wittiest character actors in movies. People forget this because technically he's a movie star. For example: Take the way Crowe, who plays a Central Intelligence Agency spymaster in the busy new thriller " Body of Lies," tosses off one of screenwriter William Monahan's nuttier non-sequiturs. Getting off a plane in Amman, Jordan, Crowe—who gained 50 pounds for the role—is asked by his weary, wary man in the Middle East, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, about the flight. "It was fine, it was fine," he says. Then, inscrutably, he adds: "I watched that 'Poseidon.' "
You appreciate such details. (Elsewhere Crowe's Ed Hoffman begins a Nixonian smoke screen of an explanation with: "Let me say this about that ...") Monahan won an Oscar for his richly brocaded cat-and-mouse games and royally profane invective in "The Departed." His dialogue has the virtue of simply being fun to deliver, although in "Body of Lies" the mood is more grim, and the story is vexingly Byzantine.
Monahan adapts the novel by Washington Post writer David Ignatius. The film is the latest collaboration between Crowe and director Ridley Scott. It begins with a botched but deadly terrorist bombing in Manchester, England, and zips around the globe from there, sticking mostly to the Middle East. Crowe's Hoffman spends much of the film on the phone doing mundane domestic activities (watching his kid's soccer match, hanging out at home) while chatting up DiCaprio's Roger Ferris, setting up the next deadly game of deception designed to entrap an Osama Bin Laden-style terrorist.
The most interesting thing about this slick but frustrating picture is the way it puts Crowe's Hoffman at the center of our mixed feelings. The man is good at his job, pleasantly ruthless and completely unflappable. The head of Jordanian intelligence, played by a sleek, cold Mark Strong, brings similar strengths to his line of work. Ferris, by contrast, is tortured, shot at and morally clouded—he doesn't like the collateral damage, and he never knows if he's about to be hung out to dry by his employers.
Director Scott knows how to wrestle complicated story lines involving many geographical hot spots, and he certainly enjoys the high-tech toys and surveillance equipment of modern warfare. Over and over we're shown what Ferris is up to from high above, as he deals and double-deals shadowy terrorists, or canoodles with his Iranian-Jordanian nurse friend, played by Golshifteh Farahani. Satellites circling the globe transmit digital images from thousands of miles away, while fake identities are created and disseminated on a laptop someplace else, and Hoffman plots America's next move.
A lot happens in "Body of Lies." Why does it leave you feeling a little lost? Partly it's a matter of narrative confusion. (I can only speak for myself. I'm sorry, what were we talking about?) And partly it's because two or three different sorts of pictures are jockeying for dominance within this one. The high-tech visuals are designed to entice an audience not interested in geopolitics or moral issues. On another track, DiCaprio's romance with Farahani, replacing the novel's more conventional triangle involving the spy's wife back home and an Anglo abroad, plays like second-shelf Graham Greene.
DiCaprio's solid, though I wonder if a real CIA agent could get away with looking so earnest every second. Crowe has the right idea, in addition to all the fun: Just throw it away, throw it away and pretty soon you build yourself a clever characterization by indirection. Crowe's not the one who has to unload what little political sermonizing "Body of Lies" allows itself. It's DiCaprio who must ultimately decry "the unnecessary travesty of this war," even though Scott's film does everything in its cinematic power to ignore that statement, whipping up fear and loathing and another round of digitally enhanced bombings at every nervous turn.
It is wise to listen to multi-billionaires when it comes to money, at least the ones who have railed against corporate greed and government laxity. ...
