Electric DiCaprio Gives Body Life
Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the man on the ground. When the CIA needs intelligence and they need it fast, he’s the one they turn to in order to get it. He can make the connections and relationships leading to the Grade-A goods on terrorist activities all over the globe, and with the Middle East building to a maelstrom of hatred and violence he’s one of the chosen few sraddling the line between light and dark still maintaining his sanity.
Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in Warner Bros' Body of Lies
Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) is a bureaucrat who plays his games of espionage and duplicity while making a turkey sandwich or walking the sidelines at his daughter’s soccer game. He has a moral certainty that the ends justify the means, especially as it concerns the war on terror, and no matter how good his men in harm's way are his reliance on technology and his own intellectual superiority is sacrosanct above anything else.
These two men have their working relationship tested as the former instructs the latter to go after an especially nasty terrorist group using any all means necessary. The problem is, every time Ferris thinks he’s sealed the deal Hoffman runs some sort of side operation inadvertently undermining all his hard work. But when the terrorist group inches closer and closer to home, the operative is going to have to trust the pencil pusher like he never has before, the lives on the line this time around nearer to his heart than ever before.
For the majority of its running time, the new thriller Body of Lies showcases Oscar-nominated director Ridley Scott (Gladiator, American Gangster) at his absolute best. This film moves like gangbusters, crisscrossing the globe and the political spectrum like nobodies business and doing it in a way that’s tense, terrific and, at times, downright terrifying.
The downside is that it doesn’t maintain this epically prophetic urgency all the way through to the end. Based on the acclaimed book by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed) offers up a foolishly romantic conclusion that doesn’t feel remotely genuine. More, Scott rushes it, and while I understand the desire to step on the gas the closer we get to the climax in this case there just isn’t enough in the way of believable information to warrant the hustle.
Thankfully there are so many positives that this admittedly sour negative doesn’t kill the picture. The points the filmmakers make are vital and, at times, downright devastating, the thought that even with all our vaunted technological advantages the inability of those leading the fight from behind their cushy desks to have an honest conversation with their opposite members on the ground will lead to ruination is almost too horrific to comprehend.
Say what you want about the guy’s early films or performances, DiCaprio is quickly and quietly turning into one of the more fearlessly talented and gifted actors working today. He tears this film to pieces with his haunted, almost feral portrait of a man desperate to protect the country he loves even though he feels alien to everything it’s starting to stand for. There is an exigency to this portrait, a lived-in hollowness to his every movement and step that’s kinetic and viscerally real, DiCaprio lifting the film up on his shoulders and carrying it across the finish line seemingly all on his lonesome.
That’s not quite fair, of course, considering that Crowe ends up matching his costar much of the way. The thing is, as good as he is the character of Hoffman just didn’t register with me in quite the same way. Don’t get me wrong, the man’s vacuous certainty shocked me to the point of profound fury, I just didn’t have the emotional connection to this agency scallywag the same way I did towards his energetically exasperated man in the field.
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to wanting more from this film. I think Scott and Monahan could have pushed it a bit further, taken things to an entirely different level then the overly-familiar and somewhat expected finale they ultimately cling to.
Yet I still liked Body of Lies, moments of it so vigorously stirring and rancorously alive I could watch them again and again probably without tiring. It is a good movie, sometimes a great one, and even if these spies ultimately don’t have anyplace different to go getting there is still so thought-provoking and entertaining I didn't mind that fact in the slightest.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
Additional Links
- Body of Lies Theatrical Trailer
