Body Of Lies

“There’s nothing to like in the Middle East,” mumbles Ed Hoffman, a CIA top-notch played by Crowe, trying to dissuade Roger Ferris (DiCaprio) from staying back in Amman. Of course, the shoe can be on the other foot. From that part of the world, there’s little to like in America. And Body of Lies, written by the screenwriter of The Departed and Kingdom of Heaven and adapted from a book of the same name by The Washington Post’s David Ignatius, is certainly not going to help the US cause.

Pitched as a terror/spy thriller — “Trust No One. Deceive Everyone.”— Body of Lies makes no bones about its politics. If the utter disgust for the war being waged in the name of jehad is supposed to be an inverse joke on how the Bush Administration is fighting it, or a view of the war on terror that is refreshingly politically incorrect, the message is lost. And that’s despite the trite use of W H Auden in the beginning: “Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.”

As Hoffman and Ferris proceed to see it, though, there are absolutely no grounds for the evils being wrought in the name of God. A suicide bomber who has lost his nerve tells Ferris: “If they think you know too much, they say martyrdom.” Looking for “low-level al-Qaeda operatives” for a counter-operation, Ferris seeks: “Basically someone between Osama and Oprah.” Another faithful is dismissed as “so he touches his head to the ground four-five times a day”. All it takes for Ferris to smoke out (to use the famous expression) the dreaded terror head is cooking up a fictitious terror group of his own over the net.

The story basically deals with the hunt for that terror head, Al-Saleem, of undefined al-Qaeda links who has threatened to target places in the US and UK. Ferris speaks Arabic, often dresses up like an Arab, wears a helpful goatee and is not averse to being hit by missiles or bitten by rabid dogs. Hoffman is his CIA handler, keeping a watch on him via an eerily clear satellite.

True to the film’s theme, there is an underpinning of distrust in the relationship between Ferris and Hoffman. While Ferris is the one taking all the risks, from Iraq to Jordan, Turkey and Dubai to Syria, as a boorish Hoffman tries to instruct him 24/7 on earphon— while chaperoning his kids to school or ballgames — Crowe gives Hoffman the sense of credibility that comes with age and experience. When Ferris urges that a local accomplice be protected or looked after, or strikes up instant likes and dislikes, you tend to agree with Hoffman that he could be naive.

However, the abilities of Crowe and DiCaprio or director Ridley Scott — who has enough Middle East under his belt but handles this one like The Gladiator — can’t keep away the disquiet over how the highly wrought and complex issue of terror has been handled.

Even as tokenism, the film doesn’t make a nod to the history that tinges and singes the region’s geography. Instead, look at the tokenism it does employ: if DiCaprio is called Ferris, sounding closely like Faris (meaning a Knight in Arabic), his love interest is a woman of Iranian descent called Aisha (the Prophet’s wife’s name; she didn’t exist in the book). Aisha’s nephews don’t like their mother’s cooking; they would rather have pasta, spaghetti. Me too, chuckles Ferris.

The Jordanian intelligence chief is an enigmatic gentleman by the name of Hani (Mark Strong), who handles what’s engulfing the region without having his dinner jacket cuffs soiled. In the heat of the Jordanian desert, he doffs his best suits for interrogation. In contrast, Hoffman is overweight, and underwashed. (Another message?) The role Hani ultimately plays is unclear, to say the least, but he at least knows what he is getting at. Al-Saleem, who stands in for Osama we presume, on the other hand, is shown smoking away into the phone at one time.

One year ago, The Kingdom came out of Hollywood, featuring government agents sent into Riyadh to investigate the bombing of an American facility. Whether tackling the question of terror, culture clash or religion, the fear and uncertainty on the ground, or the American dilemma in the Middle-East, it was a far superior effort.

Body of Lies, on the other hands, is full of half-truths. And that’s worse.

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