Given the nature of Islamic extremist groups, one wonders how Western intelligence agencies can ever penetrate them and gain the information they need.
This is the question at the centre of Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies. The security services have impressively sophisticated technology at hand, but is it enough? Early in the film we are told that, ‘Our enemy realises they are fighting guys from the future,' so they disappear by living as people from the past. If they don’t use modern technology for communication, they cannot be monitored and tracked.
Body of Lies is based on the novel of the same name by David Ignatius, a journalist who spent a decade covering the Middle East and the CIA for the Wall Street Journal. It’s impossible to know, of course, how much of his story is based in the facts of how the CIA operates and how much is invention. But much of it seems very plausible, and the grittiness and urgency of its portrayal make it feel very real.
Screenwriter William Monahan says, "The story showed the intelligence world more or less as it is with, if anything, more pragmatism and less political colouring than you find in the actual CIA." As part of his preparation for the lead role, Leonardo DiCaprio spent time talking to Ignatius as well as with former CIA agents.
The CIA’s best man on the ground in the Middle East, Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio), is trying to track down Al-Saleem, the leader of an extremist group which is responsible for a bombing campaign in Europe. He is dependent not only on his wits and experience, but also on constant communication with his boss, Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe).
Hoffman is back in suburban America, but from what he sees on his laptop via spy satellites, and from what Ferris tells him over the secure phone line, he knows precisely what is happening. And his instructions into Ferris’s earpiece can mean the difference between life and death for the agent.
Ferris is totally committed to stopping terrorism, and he risks his life daily in order to do so. Information is everything, and Ferris is relentless in his pursuit of it, but in the murky world in which he operates, he cannot be sure whose information he can trust. He has little choice but to trust Hoffman, but he knows that his superior will stop at nothing to achieve his objectives – and that may mean that Ferris is left high and dry because Hoffman is frequently running two different plans at the same time. The one man he can rely on is himself. He must trust his instincts, his ability to seamlessly switch from one situation and character to another, and his sharpness in spotting when something is going wrong.
The big difference between Ferris and Hoffman is that the former cares deeply about what is happening to the region and its people, whereas the latter is cold, ruthless and detached, concerned only with America’s interests.
