Body of Lies (15)

3:02pm Thursday 20th November 2008

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Stars: Leonard Di Caprio, Russell Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani, Oscar Isaac, Simon McBuney
Running time: 128 mins
Rating: Three stars

AFTER Black Hawk Down and Kingdom Of Heaven, director Ridley Scott is back in the Middle East - this time with the war against terror as the backdrop for a typically tough, tense thriller.

Leonardo DiCaprio's top US intelligence agent Roger Ferris is on the trail of a terrorist leader who's already orchestrated a bombing in Manchester but has so far eluded intelligence men around the world.

Ferris's "master" is CIA veteran Ed Hoffman (a chubby Russell Crowe) who sits back safely in the US gathering information on his laptop and giving orders by phone to Ferris in Jordan.

As Body Of Lies is based on the novel by Washington Post journalist David Ignatius, a specialist in covering CIA and Middle Eastern affairs, we must assume that this story has at least a whiff of authenticity about it.

The games that Hoffman plays with Ferris, whose relationship with his boss is prickly to say the the least, don't always ring true. Much more convincing is Mark Strong as the sleekly dangerous Jordanian intelligence boss Hani Salaam. At first, I couldn't help a silent laugh.

"Oh no, " I thought, "not another shady Arab character being played by a British actor". But Strong, fast becoming the villain everyone wants in their movie, is so good at being bad that any misgivings soon vanish.

And no one orchestrates action quite like Ridley Scott. Whether it's explosions, pursuits or torture scenes (a very nasty one, be warned), he can be relied upon to extract every ounce of tension.