Snappy nonsense

In espionage novels smart thriller isn't an oxymoron but in movies by "crack" action directors like Ridley Scott it usually is. Soderbergh's complicated Syriana doesn't count. It was smart, but nobody could follow it. Action movies from books have to be punchy and pared down. An explosion every ten minutes is de rigeur--specially when the budget's $70 million, as Body of Lies' is. And that buys big names--this time, Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe--and good box office to go with such a package.

Departed screenwriter William Monahan's adaptation of Washington Post columnist David Ignatius' novel, once run through the Ridley Scott ringer, is zippy but never once smart--nor does it contain a drop of real emotion. Like Jeffrey Nachmanoff's recent movie Traitor about Americans hunting down a jihadist, Body of Lies works off the assumption that swarthy actors with colorful clothes and American operatives who spout Arabic phrases are sufficient to make a story seem in the know about matters Middle Eastern. It doesn't matter. The ideal audience for such stuff approaches with crude assumptions about a dreadful enemy and a righteous democratic homeland fighting to protect itself--assumptions fed up front with Body of Lies' intro, the bombing of a row of houses in Amsterdam by Islamic terrorists and their leader's vicious statement of hatred for. . .us.

Body of Lies doesn't bother with plot at first otherwise, but instead smartly focuses on setting up its two main characters and their special relationship. You've got Leo (Roger Ferris) with whiskers in the bled dodging bullets and yelling at his sidekicks, and a puffy Crowe (Ed Hoffman) back in a Virginia suburb wiping his kids' bottoms and driving them to school in his SUV, munching cereal or sushi all the while and peering quizzically over his specs while using his fake Arkansas drawl (the two keys to his role: drawl and specs) to direct Leo over the cell phone to go out and get himself killed.

In between the dueling duo is a lot of high-tech gobbledygook and gadgetry familiar to us from the Bourne movies. We're asked to believe that CIA headquarters is watching Ferris in some marketplace in Amman on a big cross-hair screen in Virginia--with a voice (all the more chillingly, a woman's) giving the coordinates--though we've been told the terrorists are right off the radar now, avoiding all use of modern electronics. Later when a preposterous rogue scheme is initiated a Brit with a nice pad is called in to perform some elaborate long-distance cyber dirty tricks: he's called Garland (Simon McBurney). He's got a big table with twenty laptops on it, all going. Cool. But it's all just dressing. There's really not much going on, other than that our hero, Leo, is in great danger, and we're at war with the evil empire and nothing's stopping it.

The story enlivens things opportunely by having Hoffman turn up by surprise in Ferris' Amman apartment: he does get on a plane once in a while. But quizzical looks over specs and personal appearances "in country" notwithstanding, Hoffman's foul language and cynical attitude make him continually, quietly repugnant, bossy, superior, smart-ass, and vulgar. Ferris is harder to figure. He's full of bluster (as Leo was in Blood Diamond; but that was about something). He's a hard-bitten idealist? But where's the idealism? And where's the good sense? He takes command--but then he messes up. Even if the movie doesn't say so.

It's a twist Ridley Scott never exploits that Hoffman's workaholic away-from-office "multi-tasking" means he too does nothing well, or with any real feeling, neither his relationship with Ferris nor his parenting. (This may have been more developed in the book; a review at least found it too critical of US foreign policy and too nice to Arabs.) Nonetheless the Ferris-Hoffman relationship, which is constantly pushed--it jogs the short attention span with its quick scene-shifts--is a lot more interesting than Ferris' corny on-the-ground love interest with a nurse in Amman. In fact his real flirtation, spiked by his own betrayal, is his dealing with the chief of Jordanian intelligence, Hani (Mark Strong), who calls Ferris "my dear" and tells him he must be true. The truth is that DiCaprio, who implausibly, given his violence and bravado, decides to settle in the Middle East, is just angry and blasphemous. He doesn't seem to feel much other than a desire to save his own skin, and as a result we don't feel anything, and the movie doesn't say anything about whatever issues it has touched on.

Ferris "speaks Arabic" but he calls the arch enemy leader "Al Saleem,” forgetting something fundamental, the sun letters and moon letters (in Arabic, it's pronounced As-Saleem). This character is played by an Israeli actor, Alon Abutbul--maybe just as well. His would-be Jordanian girlfriend Aisha is played by an Iranian actress, Golshifteh Farahani. The keen Ferris, though he has exchanged only a few phrases with her, says he detects an Iranian accent--she's given an Iranian relative to explain her actually not being Jordanian at all. Yet Ferris screws up in Arabic so often his helper has to shoot people so he can escape from them. Mark Strong, who plays the Jordanian head of intelligence, wears "superbly tailored Savile Row suits," The New Yorker's Denby explains--and the suits are pretty; but Strong (an English stage actor of Italian and Austrian heritage) can't even pronounce Al-Qaeda correctly. (There is one scene--just one--of a group of architects when Ferris develops the "brilliant" scheme of making up a decoy terrorist group to throw "Al Saleem" and his group off--who are actual Arabs speaking real Arabic. Not to any of the main characters, of course.

Stories like this, which begin and end with depictions of a terrifying and cruel Muslim Arab enemy, are a bonanza for Hollywood, which always depicted Arabs as cruel, stupid, and evil; see Jack Shaheen's book chronicling this phenomenon, Reel Bad Arabs. The difference now is there are "real bad Arabs," only American movies have never shown any other kind.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.