Body of Lies [2008]

I viewed this film recently and I admit that I’m beginning to think that Leonardo Dicaprio is actually a much better actor than I had given him credit for in the past. I’ve seen him in the Quick and the Dead with Russell Crowe, Gene Hackman and Sharon Stone in 1995. He played a young upstart gunslinger who thought he was the best. He played a good role in that movie, but the next one I saw him in left me bored, tired and ready to quite watching movies for a while-which was his big role with Kate Winslet in Titanic in 1997. I avoided movies that had him but in the last few years I’ve seen him act in The Departed with Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon and he was excellent in that role. He made the role he played believable. The character he plays in his most recently released movie is just as believable.

Dicaprio plays CIA agent Roger Ferris and his immediate supervisor is Russell Crowe’s character-Ed Hoffmann. They both go around and around each other as if they are jockeying for position on the playing field or on the merry-go-round. The big problem is of course that he’s a US agent working primarily alone in a middle-eastern country. He cannot know who to trust at times and there are several times in the movie when I fully expect that in real life he would have been killed.

Ferris-Dicaprio-discovers through his work that there is a terrorist that lives and operates out of Jordan and he works behind the scenes, in truth behind and then behind some more, in order to try and learn who this terrorist leader is and where he might be. He makes some interesting friends along the way, and at times it appears that he’d be better off if he trusted the people that his supervisor tells him not to trust. Crowe plays what appears to be a high level CIA supervisor, but we never see anyone above him or below him other than Dicaprio so it’s difficult to determine on what level Crowe works on, but that is most likely superficial to the story itself.

We see through the movie that Dicaprio’s character wonders about what he is doing and he is hurting by his work. He seems to come to the realization that people in the Middle-East are people just as people in the US are people. By that I mean we are all worthy of respect and the chance to live. We all deserve the chance to live and to be treated fairly and to be allowed to walk down the street without someone looking at us because we look or don’t look a certain way.

The ending of the movie is much different than I would have expected. Dicaprio’s character seems to change over the course of a few weeks or perhaps a few days in the movie. But he seems to be changed more by seeing life through the eyes of a young woman he’s interested in than by anyone else’s words or deeds to him. He finds out how important life can be when he finds his precious Aisha-a nurse who cares for him after a dog bite and who he wants to see outside of the hospital clinic where she treats him. She shows him an aspect of Jordan and of the Middle-East that he probably had never seen nor contemplated existed.

I think it shows a positive example of how other people and other cultures can influence us in a positive way and help is not only to learn about ourselves but to grow and mature as well.

This movie is full of violence, bloodshed and harsh language, but it also has a positive message that I took away from it. If you enjoy Dicaprio or Crowe as well as drama and violence you probably will enjoy the movie, though the ending might seem a bit obvious. Over all I enjoyed the film especially for the message it appears to convey at the end.

The Quick and the Dead [1995]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114214/

The Departed [2006]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407887/

Body of Lies [2008]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758774/

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Eagle Eye [2008]

I was looking for a movie that had action and adventure and wouldn’t make me wait too long for it. I got what I paid for in this movie! I also found that it had a bizarre if not interesting plot and an ending that twists to get there which I tend to enjoy. There are several actors in the movie that I had seen before-Billy Bob Thornton, Michael Chiklis and Rosario Dawson-all of whom I’d enjoyed in one film or another. But the title actors-Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan-I’d had not seen nor heard of before this movie.

The plot is that Jerry-played by Shia LaBeouf-is falsely accused of being a terrorist. He is being played and moved around like a pawn in a chess game and knows not who is doing it, where he’s going or why. Shortly after he is “activated” as a pawn he meets up with his counter-part, Michelle Monaghan-who plays Rachel, and they are told in no uncertain terms that they must do as they are told or not only will they die, but others they care about will die as well. The story line seems a bit amazing, but after we learn who the voice on the phone actually belongs too then it puts in your mind whether or not something like this could actually happen.

The master-mind behind making Jerry and Rachel unwilling participants in an attack on the United States is a super-computer that would make a Cray look like an abacus! The computer takes in enormous amounts of information gathered across the globe and instantaneously interprets it and gives real-time feedback and advice on what the US military should do to prevent further terrorist attacks as well as to protect American interests. What I find interesting-looking at the plot after the fact-is that the computer that is responsible for making Jerry and Rachel pseudo-terrorists is acting like a small child. At the beginning of the movie we find the Secretary of Defense making recommendations to the US President based on the recommendations of the computer. The US President ignores the computer’s recommendations and makes his own decision. The computer later analyzes this independent choice as one that caused greater hostility to US forces and US interests abroad. Because of this the computer then believes the US President cannot make intelligent decisions and must be removed.

Not only is it amazing in the story line that this computer can come to that decision, but that it uses the US Constitution as its basis for deciding that the entire congress should be eliminated-this of course conveniently occurs in January right about when we’d be avoiding TV for the night because the President’s State of the Union address would be broadcast! So all of congress as well as the majority of the executive and judicial branches will be in the capitol building and this super-computer has decided to eliminate all of these people, and has devised a plan to do so-which involved more people than just our Jerry and Rachel, but they are the major players!

I watched and wondered how this movie would turn out. How would the computer who was able to so easily help Jerry escape from an FBI holding area be foiled and defeated?

The ending is interesting, and a bit cheesy in my opinion, but if you were with the movie up to the point where Shia LeBeouf entered the capital building because he was using the stolen FBI id and badge of Billy Bob Thornton, then you can probably make the leap to how the movie ends too! This movie won’t win any awards, but it is interesting and does provide what it looks like in the previews-action, some suspense and certainly violence. Thankfully there are very few people who are killed in the film, but the action makes up for what is lacking in that area.
If you enjoy action and suspense as well as any of the actors in the film then I’d say rent this when it comes out.

Eagle Eye [2008]
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/

Thursday, October 23, 2008