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Body of Lies

2008

Ridley Scott

Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Michael Gaston ...

6.5

30,614

Action. Thriller. Mystery A former journalist injured in the Iraq war is hired by the CIA to track down an Al Qaeda leader in Jordan. Based on Washington Post columnist David Ignatius’ 2007 novel about a CIA operative, Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio), who uncovers a lead on a major terrorist leader suspected to be operating out of Jordan. When Ferris devises a plan to infiltrate his network, he must first win the backing of cunning CIA veteran Ed Hoffman ... [+]

	Media	Author	Review
		Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"[It] is a James Bond plot inserted into today's headlines (...) [It] contains enough you can believe, or almost believe, that you wish so much of it weren't sensationally implausible (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"
		Todd McCarthy Variety	"Neither the location-based verisimilitude of Scott's shooting style nor the estimable Middle East expertise of source-material author David Ignatius can disguise "Body of Lies" as anything other than the contrived phony-baloney it is. (...) a conventional climax"
		Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"'Body of Lies' has the gritty feel of something observed firsthand (...) Crafty script (...) The part that counts is the hard kick in the teeth the movie delivers to American duplicity (...) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"
		A. O. Scott The New York Times	"The movie is a hodgepodge of borrowings and half-cooked ideas, flung together into a feverishly edited jet-setting exercise in purposeless intensity."
		Xan Brooks The Guardian	"'Body of Lies' is big and bombastic, confused and irritable - a 20th-century blockbuster struggling to adapt (too little, too late) to a 21st-century terrain (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		Keith Phipps AV Club	"[It] has elements of greatness in it but never quite performs the alchemy needed to convert them, settling instead for mere goodness."
		Tom Charity CNN	"Strong's impressive, silky-smooth performance makes this idealized figure more credible than he might have been (...) Unfortunately, there isn't enough in the way of a payoff."
		Ian Nathan Empire	"The script hints at wisdom, moral complexity, suspense even, but it’s all too jargonised and impatient (...) For all the enthralling visuals and action, the film feels garbled (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"
		J.R. Jones Chicago Reader	"Despite Crowe and DiCaprio's best efforts, their characters keep getting flattened by the steamroller narrative"

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