Body of Lies

Leonardo DiCaprio fights terrorists for the CIA in this rapid-fire thriller from director Ridley Scott (GLADIATOR, BLACK HAWK DOWN). While Roger Ferris (DiCaprio) gets his hands dirty on the teeming Arab streets, his handler Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) watches from Washington via spy satellite, cheerfully giving bull-in-a-china-shop style orders while picking up his kids from school. Innocent lives are lost, buildings blow up, and the threat of winding up beheaded on the internet is always one move away. LIES is decked out from front to back with fascinating bits of Arabic and espionage minutiae as it races along its wild mission to track down an elusive terrorist cell leader. Crowe's trigger-happy Hoffman provides the perfect foil to DiCaprio's anguished moral crusader. As the suave head of Jordanian intelligence, Mark Strong gives a scene-stealing, cobra-like performance that clashes beautifully with Crowe's 'ugly American' bullying. The beautiful Golshifteh Farahani plays the obligatory love interest, the nurse who treats Ferris' regularly occurring battle and torture wounds. Whereas most action heroes are completely healed within minutes of every fight, it's refreshing--in a grisly sort of way--to see how Ferris' wounds and bruises pile up. The solid, punchy script by William Monahan (THE DEPARTED) is adapted from the David Ignatius novel.