I was feeling morose and cranky so I took myself to see Body of Lies tonight, thinking Leo might be the cure that which ails me.
- If the CIA actually furnishes its office with Herman Miller and Barcelona chairs, I will understand completely why many Americans feel they pay too many taxes if this is what it’s being spent on.
- Unnecessary bodily change #1: Russel Crowe gaining sixty pounds. Do we really need to create a stereotypically physical manifestation for Crowe’s symbolic representation of a cavalier, lazy and indifferent fat cat running a war on the other side of the world from the comfort of the sidelines of his kid’s soccer game? Really? Come on.
- Unnecessary bodily change #2: Leonardo DiCaprio wearing coloured contacts to make his eyes dark brown. Um? I imagine we’re supposed to believe that while blond-haired, blue-eyed Leo would stick out like a sore thumb in the Middle East, brown-haired and brown-eyed undercover!Leo would blend right in. Guys, come on: he’s still a white guy with a bad Western dress sense who doesn’t fool anyone into thinking he’s there on anything other than purposely vague “political consultation” business.
- … with the exception of the architect he fools into thinking he’s some douchebag of an American businessman with poorly dyed blond highlights named Brad Scanlon. Brad. Of course his name is Brad! The bits where he’s speaking with the architect either on the phone or in person are absolutely priceless because Leo adopts this hilarious douchebaggy persona, sort of like Jude Law in I ♥ Huckabees. Win.
- Leo drinks lots of Coca-Cola in this. Win again.
- I did sort of love Russell Crowe in this, especially his propensity for calling Leo “buddy”. I suppose he’s played this kind of dickwad before in movies but, and I don’t know about you, I never really get sick of it. Maybe he’s phoning it in a bit, but I feel like Crowe phoning it in is still better than 90% of people trying their hardest on a good day. But I feel I am in the minority for really liking Russell Crowe.
- The love story was pretty unnecessary considering it was mostly used to facilitate the age-old tactic of “kidnap the girl, get the boyfriend to walk right into your trap”. This was part of a larger bit of counter-espionage but one always hopes that they’d try something new. Then again, there’s a reason these things work in real life.
- For those who fear violence: Ridley Scott relishes in a) repeatedly injuring Leo, but more importantly b) letting us witness a tiny bit of torture when the terrorist Leo’s been tracking starts breaking his fingers with a hammer. You see everything: the hammer coming down, the pulverized flesh and bone, the missing digits. It was pretty effing disgusting even by my unreasonably high threshold to this sort of thing.
- So, when terrorists set up video cameras to make home videos of their torture victims, do you ever wonder if sometimes the batteries in the cameras die? Because they showed a behind-the-camera shot during Leo’s torture video debut and, as with many cameras, there was the little battery life graphic in the top left corner. All I could think was “They’re lucky they charged that thing.” This is not what I should be thinking about in this scene.
- Most of the dialogue was pretty good but there was one line that I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to laugh at:
Crowe: You know what happens if you walk out that door?
DiCaprio: No, what happens?
Crowe You walk out on AMERICA.
Me: LKASJAD:LKAJSD:LKJAS:LKDJLASKJDLKASJDL:KJASLKDJ OMFG HE REALLY SAID THATKill me now, that line was awesome. I love terrible displays of misplaced patriotism like that.
Ew, I’m refreshing the CBC website repeatedly for election updates and the Conservatives are winning. Someone please deliver me from evil. People of British Columbia, I beg you!