“If anything happens to me or my family, an accident, an accusation, anything, then first your son will disappear, his body will never be found. Then your wife. Her body will never be found either. This is guaranteed. Then, whatever is the most dangerous thing you do in your life, it might be flying in a small plane, it might be walking to the bank, you will be killed. Do you understand what I'm saying? I want you to acknowledge that you do understand so that we're clear and there won't be any mistakes.”
-- Bob Barnes from Syriana

Ridley Scott’s Body Of Lies exists between George Roy Hill’s The Little Drummer Girl and Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana. Ridley Scott is the long lost love child of Stanley Kubrick and David Lean. He has a visual finesse that has not dimmed since The Duellists. Like Lean and Kubrick before him, he has a flair for epic storytelling which demands the immense canvas of the big screen. If he never did anything but The Duellists, Alien and Blade Runner, his reputation would be secured. It is a career of massive hits and dismal flops. Hannibal, G.I. Jane, A Good Year, and 1492: The Conquest Of Paradise still leave a sour taste in the mouth, but even these flops look absolutely beautiful. The real estate of A Good Year is the main attraction, not even Russell Crowe can overpower the beautiful surroundings of the film. David Lean and Stanley Kubrick could not always hit the mark every time. Yet even within the disasters of Ryan’s Daughter and Barry Lyndon, one was watching beautiful banalities unfold.

Body Of Lies is a very mixed bag. It comes fresh off the heels of Ridley Scott’s American Gangster-- a gargantuan criminal epic that reinforced everything that has made Mr. Scott’s films a bloody pleasure to watch in the theater in the first place. Body Of Lies may very well belong with Scott’s Matchstick Men and White Squall where the performances keep the film from falling apart altogether. Given Body Of Lies globetrotting espionage plot, the film certainly has the epic grasp and thriller elements of Black Rain, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster, Gladiator and Kingdom Of Heaven. The film has a huge scope, maybe too huge.

Body Of Lies should work better than it does. It has some things going for it. Yes, it is another film that uses the backdrop of the War On Terror as its canvas. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are front and center in William Monahan’s (The Departed) screenplay based on a novel by Washington Post reporter, David Ignatius. Body Of Lies does not suffer from the heavy-handed preaching that doomed Rendition, Lions For Lambs and Redacted. Those films were as mediocre as the Administration it was eviscerating. Sadly, Body Of Lies does suffer from run of the mill action clichés. At times, it does feel like we have seen some of these set pieces before in the Bourne series and The Kingdom. It is those action scenes that give the film any hope of surviving at the box office as a political thriller. Personally, I feel that Paul Greengrass does this kind of film best, not just the Bourne films, but also United 93. One can only imagine how he handles Green Zone which is based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s riveting Imperial Life in The Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone. The film displays the pop espionage likeness of Spy Game mixed with the technophile’s delight of Déjà Vu; both films were directed by his brother, Tony Scott. The obsession with satellite technology that is displayed in Body Of Lies is very topical for several reasons. Satellite technology plays a crucial role in the film. It is how CIA operative, Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) is able to do his job out there in the battlefield as his superiors at Langley watch from the skies. It is an Orwellian trade off of the highest order. Big Brother is watching everyone. It is no longer look to the skies, but the skies are looking at us. The technology has become a character all its own. Look at D. J. Caruso’s Eagle Eye, the machines win plain and simple-- they control everything. But truth be told, Body Of Lies works a lot better than Eagle Eye which is nothing more than a dumb downed version of Colossus: The Forbin Project-- somewhere D.F. Jones is having the last laugh. It is the technology’s misuse which delivers a chill to the audience. It gives James Bamford and his latest book, The Shadow Factory more cause for alarm than ever before. While that book is about the abuses of the NSA, it does go hand in hand with the end of privacy in our society. Do we need anymore fear? Is there not enough fear on the campaign trail being exploited as it is? The fear card is the wretched excess of Neoconservatism.

Syriana did what Body Of Lies is trying to do much better three years ago. It is the film that Body Of Lies is desperately trying to be at times. It is the great shame that Body Of Lies never finds a sustained pulse of its own. What Body Of Lies does have going for it is three good performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe and Michael Strong. The film’s major problem is that the plot is very convoluted and it does not need to be complicated as it is. Because of the convolutions of the plot, the film never gets any traction; this is a bleeding shame since William Monahan did such a fine job of adapting Infernal Affairs into The Departed. The film’s plot follows CIA operative, Roger Ferris (DiCaprio), who is working in Jordan searching for terrorists who have been bombing civilian targets in Europe and England. Ferris is the ideal operative for modern times. He speaks Arabic and has respect and knowledge of the cultures and customs of the Muslim world. He is the antithesis of his bloated supervisor, Ed Hoffman, played by Russell Crowe. Hoffman is the armchair advisor who watches the world from his monitor. He guides Ferris from the comfort and security of Langley and the Washingtonian Suburbs. The two of them are in pursuit of a mysterious Jihadist leader, Al-Saleem (Alon Aboutboul), a Bin Laden stand-in who is responsible for the multiple bombings. Ferris must enlist the aid of Hani Salaam (Mark Strong), the head of Jordan’s General Intelligence Department. Can Ferris trust Salaam and how far will that trust go? The enlistment of Salaam is a double edged sword. It should remind us of the fragile bargain we made with Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf’s after 9/11, but it plays more like a stale paradigm of Cold War intrigue. Ferris wants to use Salaam to use an informer to infiltrate a local safe house to capture Al-Saleem. It seems like warmed over John Le Carre more than anything else.

The acting in Body Of Lies is first rate for the most part. Leonardo DiCaprio reminds us that Martin Scorsese was the best thing to ever happen to him. He has been on a roll since Gangs Of New York. That is not to say that his performances in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, This Boy's Life and The Basketball Diaries were not fantastic, but Scorsese took him to another level. As Roger Ferris, he comes off as a cross between George Clooney’s Bob Barnes in Syriana and DiCaprio’s Danny Archer in Blood Diamond. There is an honesty in DiCaprio’s Ferris that reminds us of Robert Baer and Richard Clarke. Crowe’s Hoffman is another good performance from the Australian phone throwing actor. Crowe put on a lot of weight for the role. While watching him and smugness that Hoffman exudes, all I could think of was Charles Laughton’s Senator Seabright Cooley from Advise And Consent. For the most part, I believe that Crowe and Scott make a good team, even though this is not one of their better collaborations. Crowe and DiCaprio did not share enough onscreen time together. These are two very talented actors and the film would have benefited from seeing the two of them share more scenes. As good as DiCaprio and Crowe are, they are both overshadowed by Michael Strong’s Hani Salaam. He steals the film from both of them just as Raul Julia stole Tequila Sunrise from Mel Gibson and Kurt Russell back in 1988. Strong, who was also in Syriana, greatly resembles Andy Garcia; they could be brothers. Strong has a distinctive personality which permeates through every scene he is in. Hani has an elegant wickedness that the film desperately needs.

Body Of Lies should have been one of Ridley Scott’s better films. It has all the right ingredients for a solid thriller. Sadly, it is one of the season’s disappointments much like Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness. While I do not think it is a disaster, it should be better. Visually, thanks to Alexander Witt’s cinematography, the film has the trademark Ridley Scott visual flair. Yet even with some fine acting and cinematography, the film is lost in Cold War theatrics. And maybe that might be the film’s most telling sign. In the wake of 9/11, our intelligence services were still stuck in the Cold War era. The legacy of ashes never evolved into the 21st Century. It had to be violently shocked into change. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27th, 2007 cast an ominous shadow on this year. It was a foreshadowing of things to come. Pakistan is on the verge of becoming a failed state. It is impossible not to watch Body Of Lies without thinking of the events it is imitating. It is impossible not to get angry and depressed thinking about how much longer we will be in that part of the world. In the film and in real life, this is a war without end. How much longer can this go on? Ridley Scott should have taken a page from Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener. He should have made a film equally as angry.