Body of Lies

It's tempting to view Ridley Scott's latest outing as a sly metaphor for America's misadventures in the Middle East. Body of Lies is big and bombastic, confused and irritable - a 20th-century blockbuster struggling to adapt to a 21st-century terrain.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris, the acceptable face of CIA black ops complete with a bum-fluff beard and pensive frown (suggestive of Growing Doubts). Ferris has to placate his neocon boss back home (Russell Crowe) but also has to curry favour with the suave head of the Jordanian secret service (Mark Strong). He wants to flush out a shadowy terrorist organisation, but he also wants to romance a cute Muslim nurse (a cheap plot device if ever there was one).

Scott directs in his usual stentorian, sergeant-major fashion. He's Hollywood's answer to Donald Rumsfeld, dimly aware that this assignment might call for a more nuanced approach, but too shackled to a hidebound studio system to do it justice. Far safer to gloss the production with A-list close-ups and keep marching onward to the next action setpiece; another pyrrhic victory in a losing campaign.

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