Netflixing: Body of Lies
Good, but not as good as this movie poster. But what movie ever is?
So I watched Traitor a while ago and never posted anything about it. My bad. Let me do a quick summary of it. Not too horrible. The beginning was better than the ending. The upside is that Body of Lies is basically the exact same movie, but better directed with a cooler cast. Much love, Don Cheadle, but I have to be real. Real, real, real? Real, real, real, real. So let me get into this Body of Lies review so I can look at internet pictures of Bruce Willis’ new wife. Man. Smoking.
Body of Lies is about the CIA doing CIA stuff in the Middle East. That’s it. The good part is that we get to see tons of really cool Arab dudes showing off why the Muslim world will always rock-socks. When the CIA starts working with the Jordanians, we understand a bit why the United States can’t work well in their world. Let me rephrase that. We understand why Director Ridley Scott thinks that. This movie assumptions that penetrates every little chunk of the film. US is bad. Middle East is victim. Islamic terrorist bad. Torture is bad. The world has problems and always will. That, in a nut shell, is what this movie is trying to convey. How many times do they have to drop the “G” bomb. Guantanamo? Our little, private prison camp? It pops up whenever Scott wants to remind us that torture and the people who use torture are animals. The coolest line, though, is from the Jordanian Super-Spy, during a little training session that our boy Leo watches. “Its not torture. Its punishment. That’s different.” A line like that comes to an actor once a century, and he delivered it like silk sliding off a bed. Wow. Where did that come from?
The action scenes are few, but they are good. There is some RPG action that makes the film look like COD4, cars straight flipping and stuff. People yelling, Marines shooting, dust, sparks, just a brilliant moment. But these moments are very few. Russell Crowe is amazing, as always, and so is my man, Leo. Add to that an Iranian honey and I had a nice two hours. But the moral implications of the United States presence there was just too heavy handed for my tastes. I couldn’t shake it off and I rolled my eyes every time Scott tried to make me learn something. If I wanted to have deep political time I’d watch Rachel Maddow. And please, never let Rachel Maddow star in an action movie. The thing would make, like, a billion dollars day one.
