Body of Lies
My opinion ofBody of Liesbased on the commercials and trailer was that it was pass to be a teach , intense thriller - much more grounded in world than your distinctive undercover agent movie .
In that respect I was not let down , but while it was quite riveting - some expression of the account did bug me . Some of it was based on my personal views , but some of it was not .
InBody of Lies , Leonardo DiCaprio play Roger Ferris , a CIA covert operative whose desktop is never divulged . He works in the Middle East and cease up in Jordan search for terrorists who have been bombing European civilian target . In Jordan he uncovers information about Islamist extremist loss leader Al - Saleem ( Alon Aboutboul ) . Ferris devises a plan to infiltrate Al - Saleem ’s terrorist connection with the help of his boss back in Washington D.C. , Ed Hoffman ( Russell Crowe ) . Ferris takes over the local CIA office and engages the avail of the Chief of Jordanian Intelligence , Hani Salaam ( Mark Strong ) on the operation .
Unfortunately Ferris not only does n’t get it on how far he can commit Salaam , but can not trust Hoffman either - both of which could put his life in risk .
Ridley Scott gives us an excellent signified of what a close up aspect of the war on terrorist act is like - not only from the point of view of government functionary but more nearly , from the " man on the flat coat . " Between his performance inBlood Diamondand this film , Leo DiCaprio has really made the transition from shiny - confront young world inTitanicto what I would call a " real man . " Sure , they still seem to feel the need to put a beard on him to make him face old , but he surprise me with a screen presence that harkens back to honest-to-god - school leading human being .
Russel Crowe put on a bunch of free weight for his performance and is splendid as common . Besides DiCaprio , a liberal hero and focal point in the film is Mark Strong ( who reminded me a nether region of a mess of Andy Garcia ) as the Jordanian Chief of Intelligence . He gives a powerful and convincing operation .
There is batch of realistic action and suspense in the moving picture and there is n’t much of either the galling " quick edit " or " camera trill " proficiency that is so democratic in films lately . The movie sucks you in for the most part , but kind of loses you when it suffer to the romance between DiCaprio and a local nanny . Their romance does serve to fetch us into a world we are little conversant with , but for some reason it did n’t quite colloidal gel for me with the residual of the film .
Another matter that bothered me was the personation of Hoffman . While obviously not an imbecile , he was a unimaginative , easy to hate governance official : Arrogant , rich , sloppy and with a Southern accent to make him even a tinge redneckish . He just worry about what was happening at the moment , and not uncoerced to give an easy smaller win now for a much bigger payoff afterward .
On the other hand Salaam was handsome , ego - assured , patient and honorable . I suppose at least they painted Ferris as an honorable American trying to get the job done despite all the pushback and double crosses coming from Hoffman .
Those nit however are not enough to detract from the excellence of the overall motion picture . I always rule motion-picture show force harder to take when it is in a more realistic setting ( as opposed to some elaborate and unrealistic torture scene from theSawseries for exemplar ) , so you might want to keep that in mind .
physical structure of Liesdidn’t do well on its opening weekend , having been beaten by the horror flickQuarantineand believe it or not , Beverly Hills Chihuahuaon itssecondweekend . So yet again another movie that read a quasi - realistic look at the war on terror does not do well at the box role .
With things going the way they are with election political sympathies and the financial crisis , I hazard as usual people want to go to the moving picture to escape the " real humanity " and not to see something that reminds them of what they see every day on CNN .
But if you ’re looking for a great dramatic play with its share of nail biting scenes , you ’re fine with a duet of jolly brutal scene and want to see an excellent operation by Leonardo DiCaprio , trunk of Liesis definitely deserving checking out .
