Sunday, Sep. 07, 2008
Body of Lies
After the box-office failures of Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, Lions for Lambs and Redacted, you'd think Hollywood would have given up trying to lure crowds into a movie about the war on terrorism. Well, director Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down, American Gangster) thinks he knows how to sex up geopolitics: give it the sizzle of a spy thriller and get Leonardo DiCaprio to star in it. In the adaptation by William Monahan (The Departed) of the acclaimed novel by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, DiCaprio is a smooth spook trying to fool al-Qaeda leaders into believing their top command has been infiltrated by a Westerner. Russell Crowe plays the Leo's devious CIA boss.