Review of Body of Lies (2008) by Cynic 7 — 24 Feb 2010

Ridley Scott hits hard once again with his newest film, Body of Lies. Crowe turns in an understated performance with his short screen time as spook handler Ed Hoffman while DiCaprio does quite well as CIA operative Roger Ferris.

I'm actually beginning to like DiCaprio more and more with each successive film he does. The best performance however was by an Andy Garcia look a like, Mark Strong, as Jordan intelligence minister Hani.

Although the story is full of gripping tension, I found the love subplot with the beautiful Golshifteh Farahani a bit too forced and cliche. It seemed like it was only added by writer Monahan to make an ending for the film (an ending that we've seen a million times).

Overall though, Body of Lies is a all around solid action drama, a cross between Berg's "The Kingdom" and "Syriana". The production design by Arthur Max is flawless with spot on sound editing by Karen Baker and crew.

If you're looking for a fairly realistic political actioner with a bit more depth than the Bourne Trilogy, don't look any farther. Also, of note is a new song by Guns N Roses that runs over the end credits called "If The World" (it's pretty good).