I thought BODY OF LIES was a good flick. It’s not CITIZEN KANE, hell, it’s not even THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, but I thought it was a solid flick and one worth the price of admission. The script by William Monahan was decent (no Academy Award winner, though), and the actors were strong, especially Mark Strong as Hani, the head of Jordanian Intelligence.
What surprises me, though, are the critical reactions. The ones that just don’t like it and say it’s oddly conventional.
Well, I guess it really doesn’t surprise me. The film is conventional in how it’s shot, and, I guess, the subject matter since we do seem to be in some sort of war on terror according to the head chimp at the White House. But it’s conventional only in the technical aspects.
I’ll now discuss the flick like you’ve already seen it. If you haven’t then don’t blame me, I just work here.
Ridley Scott and William Monahan have crafted a blistering indictment on the US war on terror. These guys are basically saying we don’t know what we’re doing. Russell Crowe plays the overweight, uppper-upper middle class bureaucrat; a guy who lives on the phone, dispensing orders of life and death like he’s a waiter reciting that day’s lunch specials all in the service of “saving civilization”. Dicaprio plays the CIA operative on the ground, fluent in Arabic, carrying out the orders with some pang of regret, but ultimately doing his job the best he can though he’s handcuffed by Crowe.
Ok, so we have Crowe obviously the metaphor for the entire US government. We see Crowe giving out his orders at soccer games, dropping his kids off at school, and while grocery shopping. He’s fighting for the US, but it’s a part-time gig, you know? He can do this, and still maintain his standard of living. Dicaprio is the stand-in for the US military. A can-do guy, beaten and bloody, and able to win this thing if only Crowe would stop tying Dicaprio’s hands behind his back, and listening to the generals…oops, I mean, and listening to him since he’s the one on the ground.
Yeah, we’re beat in the head a few too many times with these heavy metaphors, but what I thought was neat about the flick was the Monahan and Scott basically gave us the two players in this war on terror, the US government and the US military, but then still said, “Wait. That’s not all there is too it.” And promptly plays with the audience’s expectations without the audience realizing it.
The Jordanian Intelligence is the stand-in for the rest of the world. Hani only has one condition when he’s told that he’ll be working with Dicaprio: Don’t lie to me.
But this is not RENDITION. Jake Gyllenhal isn’t saving anyone in Scott’s movie. This movie’s hero is not Crowe or Dicaprio. The hero is Hani. He’s impeccably dressed, smooth and suave…He’s Cary Grant from NOTORIOUS. I don’t think this can be stressed enough and I wonder if that’s where some of the criticism comes in: It’s got a bunch of US movie stars in it, it’s a very liberal view on the war on terror, not because it’s telling us anything new, but because it tells us that Hani is the one that really knows how to fight terrorism, really knows how to conduct this war, and AND saves Dicaprio’s ass at the end.
This picture is telling us that the US is inept in the war on terror, but it goes one step further and tells us that it’s the Middle Eastern intelligence agencies that are going to save our bacon. We watch a movie in which the cavlary arrives, saving Dicaprio from becoming another terrorist victim, but it’s a Middle-Eastern cavalry that does the life saving, not the US.
I think this can’t be stressed enough. In a standard, “conventional” Hollywood picture on the war on terror, we would’ve seen Russell Crowe be the first person to visit Dicaprio in the hospital, saying something like, “See I told you you should’ve trusted me.” Or some such horseshit. This way we would’ve had some comfort in the fact that, yeah, Crowe’s character was a prick, but he knew what he was doing. When, in fact, Crowe’s character doesn’t know really know what he’s doing, and he’s fucking things up. It’s Hani who knows what he’s doing, and that’s hammered home at the end of the movie since he’s the first person to visit Dicaprio in the hospital.
So yeah, this movie isn’t conventional by any means, and I think it’s a sly dig at not only the US war on terror, but a sly dig at Hollywood where the “hero” is actually a foreigner.
Tags: body of lies, crowe, dicaprio, mark strong, terrorism movie, terrorist
