WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Minutes before starting Ridley Scott's "Body of Lies," a studio rep warned the audience that several members of the previous night's screening had walked out before the end, apparently disturbed by parts of the movie, which he described as "challenging."
At a time when viewers love being disturbed, from torture porn dramas to TV shows, that was intriguing. What could disturb or offend anybody nowadays?
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But by the end of the long, bloody and mostly successful War on Terror thriller "Body of Lies," I'm pretty sure what scenes sent those moviegoers scurrying for the exits. We might not mind watching nameless actresses be made mincemeat of in everything from "Saw" to "Hostel,"but a beloved star like Leonardo DiCaprio?
And after Abu Ghraib, Daniel Pearl and the coverage from the Middle East, perhaps it's all a little too real.
With most movies about the War on Terror failing to win an audience or good reviews, it'll be interesting whether Scott's approach gets a different reaction. It might based on its stars alone. DiCaprio plays conflicted CIA operative Roger Ferris, who is hunting a bin Laden-type terrorist mastermind, and Russell Crowe is Ferris' supervisor Ed Hoffman, who is calling the shots safely from a chair in Langley, Va.
Scott, as much as he loves blowing stuff up, is trying to say something more than whether the war is justified or not. He is arguing that it's easy to discount the human cost of conflict when you're continents away. And when someone else does the dirty work.
We're meant to identify with Ferris, of course, who's good at his job of shooting, gathering information and betraying people for the sake of the cause. And we do, in theory. But DiCaprio struggles to flesh out his character, especially when he's saddled with suspiciously distracting facial hair, stale dialogue, the noise of all those explosions and pretty much one expression of pained disillusionment.
He has some great moments while romancing a nurse (Golshifteh Farahani) and in an unsubtle but effective speech toward the end that channels both terror and righteous indignation. But it's nothing that Matt Damon didn't do better barreling through the Bourne movies.
Crowe, on the other hand, perfectly inhabits Ed, a guy who has too much power, too little compassion and too much practice at pretending he's above it all. With about 50 extra pounds and a deceptively accommodating drawl, he's disturbing because he's so calm. Crowe's at his best when Hoffman guides Ferris through pumping a scared Arab informant for intelligence with promises of a place in a safe house, then blithely orders that man's betrayal.
"Body of Lies," based on the novel by David Ignatius, might find an audience with those who like their political thrillers less preachy than, say "In the Valley of Elah" or "Rendition" but with a bit more of a brain than "The Kingdom."
And they'll probably be disturbed. Whether that's a good thing depends, I suppose, on the viewer.
"Body of Lies"
Grade: B-
Rated R: Profanity, violence and torture
Running time: 2 hours, 8 minutes
The verdict: A bloody, heavy-handed war saga saved by Russell Crowe's subtle, detached menace.
Leslie Gray Streeter writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail: lstreeter AT pbpost.com
