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Ok so I am a moderate fan of Ridley Scott films. I loved Black Hawk Down and Kingdom of Heaven (i’m a sucker for a good action film!), I quite liked American Gangster but I didn’t come away from the cinema thinking “WOW what a great film I must go and see that again”. This is how I feel with Body of Lies.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe and Mark Strong, which got me very excited for a number of reasons.

Ever since the departed I have been a big fan of Dicaprio (I actually liked Romeo and Juliet but didn’t really care much for his other films), Blood Diamond further added to this love with his character ‘Danny Archer’, a gritty South African mercenary.

Mark Strong is an actor I have followed since I was a teenager when he played a bad guy in ‘Sharpes Mission’, a Napoleonic Wars series starring Sean Bean. I remember him standing out and since then I have loved him in films such as ‘Rocknrolla’ and ‘Scenes of a Sexual Nature’.

Anyway enough of me rambling on, these two actors got me excited about watching the film, add Crowe into the mix and BOOM, it should be a good film.

The film follows a CIA agent, Roger Ferris (DiCaprio), who works for an armchair CIA boss Ed Hoffman (Crowe). Hoffman uses Ferris as his man on the ground, sending him to terrorist hotspots, finding people to work as spies so that they can infiltrate Al Qaeda cells. This is all very well, if it weren’t for Hoffman who is just really a typical example of a complete prick. Imagine terrorism and the war in Iraq in a big mixing bowl, then add a really fat guy with a mixing spoon and you have someone close to Ed Hoffman. He represents the stereotypical, gung ho American guy who doesn’t care about the ways of the east. He wants control over everything and it is obvious that he cannot be trusted. Fingers and pie comes to mind.

Ferris, on the other hand, seems to care about the people in the film that hoffman doesn’t. He understands the concepts of trust and truth which Hoffman fails to care about. This causes him to be liked and protected by Strong’s character, Hani, the top dog in Jordan.

The plot fails to grip you from the start of the film, as it is not obvious as to what the plot is. I found myself wandering what the film was actually about at around the half way point. I mean, sure, its about the war on terror and how America deals with it, but seriously I couldn’t see where it was going or what the point of it was. After this blip though, the film starts to take shape, introducing a love interest and a rather cunning plot to bag a big terrorist.

Earlier on in the film Hani partners up with the Americans to moniter terrorist movements in Amman. He takes on an insider called Karami (Kais Nashif) tasked with infiltrating the main Al Qaeda network that Hoffman and Ferris are trying to bring down. Hoffman finds out about this and wants control over Karami. Hani tells him to bugger off but Hoffman goes after Karami anyway without Ferris knowing. Hoffman fails to get Karami and causes major problems between Hani and Ferris, with regards to trust.

The film ends up with Ferris working on a way to get the leader of Al Qaeda cell to make a call on his mobile phone (so that they can trace him etc). This goes tits up and he ends up being captured, leading to a gruesome scene where he gets his fingers hammered to bits. This is probably the highlight of the film, it certainly made me wake up!

I wont tell you the ending but put it this way, it relies on Hani and Karami.

Like Black Hawk Down, Scott portrays to the audience how incredibly volatile situations can become when you throw in stupid bosses, with silly ideas and big egos (Hoffman in the film and General Garrison in Black Hawk). It makes you wander about the state of the world today, is it really being run by feckless fuck wits with their own agendas? The end line from Hoffman is full of irony, as Ferris will probably be safer in Jordan on his own, than with the CIA.

The film failed to grip me until the end and even then It wasn’t amazing. Body of Boredom indeed.

The Good:

• The acting in the film is of a high quality
• The plot is pretty cunning

The Bad:

• The film doesn’t get good until over half way through
• The film just seems to be rather boring
• The love story is not believable although it does work well with the main plot

Overall score out of 10:

An underwhelming 5/10

If you like the idea of this film you may also like:

American Gangster

Spy Game

IMDB Link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758774/