Hoffman is a family man who’s never disconnected from his work. He makes momentous decisions while watching his daughter’s soccer game or helping his young son use the potty. The closest relationships for Ferris, who is finalizing a divorce from his wife, are those with the sources he develops in the Middle East—the very same people Hoffman sees as little more than temporarily useful, to be disposed of once they’ve divulged information. (“You milked him, and he was dry,” he coldly tells Ferris about one of the contacts who has risked his life to provide intelligence.)
Ferris grows increasingly exasperated by Hoffman, who watches Ferris’ every move on a big board in the CIA’s Virginia headquarters, thanks to a satellite that tracks the movement of Ferris and his contacts in the region. (After Eagle Eye, The Dark Knight and the Bourne trilogy, the overriding message of today’s action film seems to be that anyone can be watched anywhere, at any time, thanks to a combination of technology and aggressive—sometimes too aggressive—intelligence efforts.) When Hoffman lies to crucial sources, such as Jordanian intelligence expert Hani Salaam (Mark Strong, who steals the movie from his better known co-stars), it’s up to Ferris to pick up the pieces.
The distance between Hoffman’s cool-headed but questionable tactics and Ferris’ fierce commitment to the men who provide information to him makes Body of Lies more interesting than its narrative sometimes deserves. Do we really need to see extended sequences of cyber-experts hacking their way into someone’s online accounts so they can use the information for their own purposes? Body of Lies is slowed more than once by the filmmakers’ mistaken notion that watching computer wizards enter quick keystrokes makes for invigorating cinema. Also, a romance between Ferris and an Iranian nurse feels tacked on, even though it doesn’t terribly detract from the movie.
Those few story elements hurt this otherwise well-paced, well-performed film. The pairing of DiCaprio and Crowe has some fine moments, although Crowe’s Southern accent isn’t fully convincing and the film’s sympathies clearly lie with DiCaprio’s desperate field agent—a much more complex role. Body of Lies would have been a better film had it given each man’s view equal credence, but even those who identify with some of Hoffman’s views will find that they can go only so far in defending him. Still, Ferris’ views are not completely opposed to Hoffman’s. When challenged about the United States’ war effort in Iraq, Ferris couches his forceful response in a way that defends U.S. interests, and his certainty appears not to be a put on.
