I'll give them credit for at least not being able to draw on characters they've built up, but I was so disinterested in Russel Crowe's character and his stupid earpiece, id rather they cut these scenes entirely. This sort of thing is a main-stay of countless episodes of Homeland, Bourne films, and other modern war films but this is by far the worst example I've seen. They fall too easily into the trap of: Agent in the field does a thing, cutaway to Washington where nameless agents watch on via drone feed and talk technogibberish, main analyst makes a face, cut back. It further adds a sense of irrelevance to these already uninteresting cutaways from the action. The colour palette in the US based scenes is so under saturated you'd think you'd stepped into the Bourne Ultimatum. Some of the cinematography is lazy and borderline archaic for this point in time and other similar movies put it to shame. I don't know whether there was a serious issue in terms of editing, or re-writes, but it feels so disjointed it's hard to not feel like you're watching a home movie.įor 2008, the film is shot awfully when compared to it's peers.
#Body of lies movie reddit full
I almost turned off before the 30 minute mark, down to the simple fact the movie felt like a student film that needed to fit within the 5 minute teacher-set remit but the students filmed a full 8 hours of footage. No hang time on emotional moments or dramatic events. The editing doesn't help and there is really no spacing between shots, scenes or locations. The pace over the first 20-30 minutes is unrelentingly confusing. What’s fascinating is how that bleeds into other areas of your life,” Donald De Line, co-producer of the film, told the New York Times.Īs a thriller, ‘Body of Lies’ does stand as an engrossing achievement, exploring the depths of its characters and the conundrums they face in the larger picture of modern espionage while paying homage to classic thrillers like ‘Three Days of the Condor.Watching this movie late at night, I felt like I was on speed. You are in a world where a character’s job is deception, when your life and your job are about deception. What attracted us is that it’s a taut, provocative spy thriller with elements that certainly appeal to me as a producer and Ridley as a filmmaker. But that’s not the reason we were attracted to it. “Yes, the Middle East is a hotbed of political unrest and has been for hundreds of years. Even while the premise of Middle East politics sets the stage for the narrative, the film is conceived first and foremost as an espionage thriller. Along with Sa’ad Khair, Britain’s Operation Mincemeat during World War II has also inspired the novel partially.
Khair was a prominent figure in the intelligence and espionage circle of the Middle East in the early 2000s.ĭavid Ignatius, the author of the novel, met Khair in person to listen to his accounts to model the character of Hani Pasha in the novel. The character Hani Salaam is seemingly/partly based on Sa’ad Khair, a Jordanian intelligence official, who also served as the head of Jordan intelligence agency, General Intelligence Directorate, from 2000 to 2005. He’s trying to hold on to a semblance of morality and a belief in his country while his country is letting him down, and ironically he’s starting to trust people who are – while not exactly the enemy – not the people he’s beholden to,” DiCaprio added while explaining the foundations of his character and the narrative.Įven though the narrative of the film and the novel is entirely fictional, reality and real-life personas have inspired the creation of the characters. “You have this character that is in a deceitful world, trying to catch the enemy that he could never trust. I think we got as close as we could get to how the US operates in this war on terror,” Leonardo DiCaprio, who portrays Roger Ferris, said to Guardian in November 2008. It is about covert operations, so we are doing a movie about modern-day CIA operations and practices. “Intrinsically, an organization like the CIA relies on secrecy. In the mold of a thriller, the fictitious narrative offers a look at the dynamics pertaining to the intelligence operations in the Middle East post 9/11. In the larger premise of the War on Terror, the novel and the book depict the dilemma of the protagonist Roger Ferris, who is conflicted between his own understanding of the war and the involvement of his superiors who make him proceed with operations that question his perceptions. The screenplay of William Monahan is based on the eponymous novel written by David Ignatius. No, ‘Body of Lies’ is not based on a true story.
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