“Body of Lies” preview - an Iraq war movie with a message that might be commercially successful too?
Posted on September 6th, 2008 by admin2Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe star as CIA operatives out to smash terror cells in the Middle East, in “Body of Lies” scheduled to hit theaters Oct. 10. Adapted by William Monahan, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of “The Departed,” from Washington Post columnist David Ignatius’ intricately plotted espionage novel of the same name, “Body of Lies” presents the most stinging screen portrayal of American foreign policy by any Hollywood studio movie in recent memory.
DiCaprio portrays Roger Ferris, an idealistic field agent operating out of Iraq and Jordan who resorts to elaborate subterfuge — concocting a fictitious sleeper cell and staging a mock bombing — to flush a terrorist mastermind out into the open.
Crowe plays Ed Hoffman, the veteran stateside CIA bureaucrat who thwarts Ferris’ progress at every turn with his own covert missions and unquenchable thirst for power. And along the way, American spies torture a suspect, innocent people’s lives are ruined via satellite downlink and foreign nationals who cooperate with the agents wind up being sacrificed in the name of homeland security. “Welcome to Guantanamo Bay,” hisses one would-be torturer in the movie.
It’s a deliberate throwback to Nixon-era conspiracy thrillers, films that spotlighted American political skulduggery and corruption. “To make a highly intelligent film with today’s politics: That was the objective,” DiCaprio said. “This movie could — not necessarily say something about the state of the world, but — take grasp of where we are in history right now.”
For his part, director Ridley Scott said that since filming his 2001 historical war thriller “Black Hawk Down,” he’s felt obligated to make movies that are “about something.” Coming off the smash-hit success of last year’s “American Gangster,” he intends “Body of Lies” to voice certain hard truths about the United States — even if that means ruffling some feathers in his adopted country.
“I’m not American. I’ve been here in the U.S. all my career, and over the last 30 years things have changed dramatically,” Scott said. “It’s an evolution, a softening process. We’re not as hard as we were. We’re way too accepting of political situations that are, frankly, outrageous. Don’t you agree?”
DiCaprio and Scott seem only too aware, a spate of earlier films set in and around the social fallout of the Iraq war — “Rendition,” “Stop-Loss,” “The Kingdom” and “In the Valley of Elah” — failed to connect with audiences.
“It is a failed subject matter in the sense that none of those films has been successful,” DiCaprio said. “But whether [’Body of Lies’] was going to be commercial or not was never a factor. It’s the opportunity that we get to make this movie. You feel lucky to get to do it. The audience can get involved while simultaneously getting insight into what the United States is doing in the Middle East.”
Scott was more blunt. “Do I think it’s a commercial movie? My gut tells me it’s a commercial movie,” he said. “I think a lot of those Iraq war movies were jingoistic. This one isn’t jingoistic. The audiences smell that.”
The film offers plenty of other visceral stimulation as well, tautly paced around shootouts, car chases and lushly photographed explosions courtesy of cinematographer Alexander Witt.
Known for his crusading efforts as an environmentalist with a growing affinity for appearing in issue-oriented films (see 2006’s “Blood Diamond”), DiCaprio says he checked his political agenda at the door when he signed onto the project. But researching his character with a former head of the CIA (whom the actor declined to name) and coming to understand something of how agency operations are run in the Middle East gave him a new perspective on the peace process.
“You don’t want anyone to leave with a moral judgment when they see a movie like this,” DiCaprio said. “But the more we did the movie, the more we got involved with the day-to-day operations of the CIA — you realize what they’re undertaking. The thought of stopping this in one or two wars? In 10, 20 years? If there’s any moral message to the movie, it’s that we’ve bitten off so much more than we can chew.”
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