A common remark aimed at the career of Ridley Scott is that no matter what the diverse subject of the movie is, the veteran director always tends to prioritise his admittedly stirring visuals over characters or emotions. Obviously, that isn’t true for all of Scott’s most famous works (you can call Gladiator a lot of things, but un-emotional? C’mon.), however adding creedence to this repeated accusation is 2008’s Body Of Lies, the lastest addition to the widely growing list of movies that casts an eye over the dirty spy work occuring in Iraq after the events of 9/11.
In many ways, Body Of Lies plays to the strengths of the main players involved; Scott gets a lot of global toys to play with as he paints a picture of a loyalty-free existence in the CIA, Leonardo Dicaprio gets to look sweaty and tormented as he tries to stay a step or two ahead of both the terrorists his chasing and his own superiors, and Russell Crowe gets hang out with his Gladiator buddy Scott once mors as he steps back from the action. However, despite the presence of all these factors, do they actually have anything profound or even remotely original to say?
After a bombing in Sheffield leads to a terrorist cell in Manchester blowing themselves up once being discovered by heavily armed authorities, we meet resourceful CIA Officer Roger Ferris who is hunting for actionable intelligence in Samarra, Iraq, in order to find the cell’s elusive leader, Al-Saleem. In a short time, we sense that Ferris not only is highly adept at his job, but he has a genuine respect for the country, it’s people and their beliefs, which allows him to do what is necessary with far more skill than your average operative. However, he’s constantly finding himself stuck within the callous machinations of his asshole superior, Ed Hoffman, who seems to constantly have multiple scheme running at the same time which makes him about as trustworthy as a hungry dog.
After a mission to draw a possible witness out of the cell is scuppered when Hoffman refuses to ensure the witness is to be kept safe, a firefight eventually ensues that causes Ferris’ partner to catch a near-direct hit from a RPG, but as Roger recovers in hospital, he discovers that his disastrous mission has unveiled to existence of a safe house that could ultimately lead to Al-Saleem.
Moved to Amman and installed as CIA Station Chief, Ferris may now have a shot at bringing down this cell once and for all, but there’s some pretty sizable hoops he’ll have to jump through. First is gaining the trust of Hani Salaam, the frankly terrifying head of the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate, who could be a valuable ally if treated with the proper amount of respect – but the second is trying to ensure that the opportunistic Hoffman,who has no respect for anyone, doesn’t fuck him to the extent that his life is in danger.
Place Body Of Lies in a vacuum, and you have yourself a smart, capable spy thriller that has a few things to say about the complete and utter lack of trust that comes with sticking your oar into the Middle East. In fact, some of the best and memorable moments come from the sight of a frantic, stressed Dicaprio trying to focus on the task ahead of him while Crowe’s shockingly indifferent supervisor keeps screwing up his plans without the slightest care in the world about how much carnage he causes. It’s a worryingly amusing takedown of American foreign policy as Crowe – carrying an extra 50lbs and seemingly wearing Al Pacino’s bristly Godfather III wig – relishes playing a devious prick who quite happily trades with people’s lives on the phone while dropping his kids off at school. Likewise, while Crowe is in his element after gleefully fleeing the action hero stereotype, DiCaprio is always at his best whenever he’s playing a character whose existence is almost completely comprised of weaponised stress. In fact, other than Tom Cruise, there’s probably not other actor who can play sustained professional panic attack as well, and this role certainly gives him ample opportunity to flex those sweaty, constantly paranoid muscles as he’s buffeted between his conscience, two governments and a terrorist cell.
However, despite a spirited opening half hour that sees such faces as Oscar Issac and Michael Stuhlbarg pop up briefly before various reasons see them removed from the board (being cut for time or violently written out are prime reasons for exiting a spy thriller early), Body Of Lies soon settles into a mid-film rhythm that, while certainly intriguing, belabours the same points over and over again.
There’s also that same issues of balance and casting that constantly arise whenever your thriller enters the Middle East and while Ridley obviously couldn’t give much of a shit beyond crafting the story he wants to tell (let’s not forget that he went on to cast Christian Bale as Moses and Joel Edgerton as Ramses II in Exodus), but one of Body Of Lies’ greatest conundrums is that the best thing in the movie is the performance of Mark Strong as the wonderfully intense Hani Salaam. Genuinely intimidating as he puffs on cigars and happily wears turtle necks in the Middle Eastern heat, some might get disgruntled by the fact that a Jordanian is being played by Mark Strong, but the fact of the matter is, while Dicaprio is acting strung out and Crowe acts flippant, he practically acts everyone else off the screen. There’s also that continuing issue about the balance of having both “good” and “bad” Iraqis adequately portrayed in a film that’s about Americans doing whatever the Hell they want, but if that stuff isn’t to sort of thing that distracts you, then you might want to stick another half-star on.
Of course, as Black Hawk Down proved, no one can shoot hostile terrain in war-torn countries quite like Scott, and while he occasionally borrows one too many military-style surveillance shots from his late brother Tony, there’s no doubting that his visual style is as strong as ever. Dust clouds, explosions, smoking trash heaps, all are shot with that breathless luster that still makes Scott one of the greatest visualists of the medium. In the rare moments when the film delves a little bit under the surface, we find proof that the director could mine new stuff such as a grisly subplot involving bone fragments of Ferris’ blown up partner having to be picked out of his skin (surely a bittersweet notion for anyone who’d want Oscar Issac inside them), or an effectively savage digit-mashing torture scene.
However, without his eye and the efforts of Dicaprio, Crowe and Strong, there’s no escaping that Body Of Lies doesn’t really much to add to the genre other than the CIA can be really fucking mean (in other news, water is wet). Still, the actors get to strut their stuff, Scott gets to paint vet another vivid canvas with sand and blood and we get another thriller set in the Middle East that provocative for many different reasons. However, it’s also curiously uninvolving and at the end of the day, do we want to be as cold and closed off as the unfeeling men who work in the shadows of this world? Scott seems to be making half-hearted comparisons about terrorists and the men trying to keep them in check, but it soon gets lost in figurative, pretty-looking, sandstorm.
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