Movies You Need Not Watch: Body of Lies

Body of Lies, released in 2008 and directed by Ridley Scott, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe as CIA agents who are trying to take down a massive terror network in the Jordan area. One would think that seeing those three names above the marquee that there is no way the movie could go wrong, but oh how it does.

I watched it last night and I knew very quickly that it was going to go downhill. First, the movie shows locales on a black screen and changes them very quickly, moving from Manchester, England to Jordan to Washington, D.C. to Dubai in the blink of an eye. If they were intending their audience to be smarter than the average bear, perhaps they should not have advertised it as a movie with tons of explosions and betrayals.

The second crack in the good movie lining came with their physical appearances and accents. Russell is distractingly overweight in the movie and has one of the worst wigs I've ever seen (please see below), along with a vague Southern accent that sounds more like a "fat voice" than a real person from an actual location in the United States.

Then there's Leo. An undeniably handsome man, the hair and makeup people decided to put him in a black greaser wig to match his pube-esque beard, so that he can blend in with the Jordanians (of course). His accent ranges from his normal Leo voice (which would have been fine) to straight Texan, which is an awkward jump to breach when he's supposed to be playing the same character.

Finally, after I got passed the disastrous hair/makeup/accents I actually started to notice the plot. To be fair to the trailer, the movie does deal with betrayals, but they are not nearly as devastating as the filmmakers would like you to believe, and the explosions do not have the shock and awe effect as intended (plus there are very few of them).

Body of Lies is trying desperately to be like Syriana, by forcing complex character status onto each actor and having the audience decide if there are any truly good characters in the movie. The problem of this is that the movie's premise is meant for an action movie, not a thinking movie, and it seems Ridley decided halfway through to switch from action to thinking, and the movie is not nearly as intelligent as Syriana (nor the acting as good) to sustain this. It's sad to think that such talent is wasted so thoroughly, so for better films of the three watch Black Hawk Down (Ridley), The Insider (Russell) and The Departed (Leo) and rejoice in the talents that they are and what might have been had they all put their heads together differently.

Oh, and for extra fun, there are only two women featured in the movie with more than one line of dialogue (and they are featured for less than ten minutes total). Yippee!

Images found via Google Images.