Dick Cheney is not exactly the kind of person that anyone – probably including most members of his family – would consider cuddly. But when the vice president appeared on “Meet the Press” on Sept. 16, 2001, he was in a particularly sour mood. Responding to the attacks that had hit America five days earlier, Cheney talked about the urgent need for the country’s intelligence agencies to embrace “the dark side.”
“You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you’re going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities,” Cheney said. “It is a mean, nasty, dangerous, dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena.”
If “Body of Lies,” the Middle East espionage thriller opening Friday is any indication, Cheney wasn’t kidding.
The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as resourceful CIA agent Roger Ferris, who’s stationed in Iraq and has been tasked with hunting down the shadowy leader of a terrorist organization. A paunchy Russell Crowe plays his handler, Ed Hoffman, the head of the agency’s Near East division back in Washington. With their results-at-all-costs mentality, the two are often forced to operate in morally gray areas that might give less hearty people pause – enemies are tortured, friendly sources are betrayed and allowed to die.
And as far as we know, the film is reasonably accurate.
“Body of Lies” is based on the novel of the same name by David Ignatius, a Washington Post reporter and columnist who has been covering the intelligence business for three decades. “I think people understand that we need an intelligence service to go out and find and sometimes steal the secrets we need to keep us alive,” Ignatius says. “But as a democracy, I think we’re uncomfortable with what intelligence agencies do.”
Ignatius says the idea for “Body of Lies” grew out of a conversation he had in 2002 with then-director of the CIA George Tenet.
“I asked at one point, who’s really doing a great job helping the agency deal with al Qaeda?” he says. “Tenet, with his characteristic enthusiasm, said, ‘The Jordanians are superstars! They’re unbelievable!’ “
They’re superstars all right.
Jordan is reportedly home to Al Jafr Prison, a super-secret facility you won’t find on any map, which the CIA uses to interrogate prisoners. Some of America’s most valuable detainees have reportedly passed through its walls, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi, a Yemeni terrorism suspect who spent time being interrogated in Jordan, claimed that his captors “beat me up in a way that does not know mercy. They threatened me with electricity, with snakes and dogs. [They said] we’ll make you see death.”
In the movie, DiCaprio is forced to form an uneasy alliance with the menacing head of Jordanian intelligence (GID) Hani Salaam, played by Mark Strong. Salaam is clearly not a man to be crossed, and he runs the GID like an absolute monarchy, demanding loyalty from his underlings and torturing and intimidating suspects.
In one scene, Salaam has a detainee speak by phone to his mother, who has been moved to a new, government-financed apartment. The implications are obvious.
“That scene is in the book, and that really happened,” Ignatius says. “That’s a real piece of Jordanian trade craft. They do deep research into the target, spend time cultivating his family, then hand a phone through the door with the words, ‘Talk to your mother.’ “
DiCaprio says the film’s moral quandaries appealed to him, and that “Body of Lies” is a “great political piece that’s pertinent to this time.”
“I saw my character as an operator in the Middle East that was trying to do his job in the higher moral context that his boss wanted him to,” DiCaprio says. “And there was this great conflict that this character has where he’s asked consistently to do things that he doesn’t believe in for the betterment of his country and this war on terror.”
Director Ridley Scott (of “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down”) says his film, adapted for the screen by “The Departed” writer William Monahan, is “fundamentally about seduction and betrayal.” Ignatius agrees.
“The thing that I keep coming back to that I think is true to life is the process of seduction then abandonment,” Ignatius says. “That’s true to the CIA’s story. Time after time, we go out into the world and encourage people to take risks, to join us, and then, at a crucial moment – because of a lack of political will or other reasons – we leave them hanging. I’ve seen that happen over and over and over again, and it really bothers me.”
While most political or intelligence junkies won’t find anything truly astonishing in “Body of Lies,” the film has proven controversial to some – specifically governments in the Middle East.
The feature was originally scheduled to be shot in the United Arab Emirates, but the country did an about-face and withdrew permission, reportedly because officials deemed the subject matter too sensitive.
“After receiving approval, it was later rejected, as Dubai does not want to do any scripts that are of a political nature,” Tim Smythe, CEO of a Dubai-based production company, told Variety. Much of it was ultimately filmed in Morocco. (The UAE has seemingly reversed course again and included “Body of Lies” in next week’s Middle East Film Festival in Abu Dhabi.)
Golshifteh Farahani, a 25-year-old Iranian who plays a Jordanian nurse and the object of Ferris’ affections, was barred from leaving her native country after appearing in “Body of Lies,” her first Hollywood film. Iran’s state news agency reported in August that Farahani had been detained at the airport and prevented from flying to California to examine a new offer.
Crowe says the movie is right to portray some of the grayer aspects of the spy business.
“I don’t think it’s so responsive to what’s happening now – because what’s happening now is actually the fruit of seeds planted two or three decades ago, if not more,” he told MTV. “But I think it’s timely to do a movie like that. It’s important, and Ridley is up for [portraying] the true negatives of this web of intrigue that’s been created.
“I don’t think it will be very popular,” Crowe added.
He may be right. Daniel P. Franklin, a professor and author of “Politics and Film: The Political Culture of Film in the United States,” says politically focused movies are always a gamble because they rarely appeal to Hollywood’s most lucrative audience: young, apolitical men.
“Looking at the trailer for ‘Body of Lies,’ it’s a crapshoot,” Franklin says. “People aren’t that interested in Iraq anymore. Given the hierarchy of issues, people are more concerned with the economy. And also, filmmakers have to be very careful about preaching. I don’t want to go to the movies to take medicine.”
Franklin cites the Matt Damon CIA snoozer “The Good Shepherd” as an example of a political film that flopped. “It’s a message movie, and nobody wants to watch that. Political films can make it if it appeals to a niche audience, and that’s why Michael Moore makes it,” he says. “But a big-budget political film, I wouldn’t bet on.”
Everyone behind the film, however, insists it’s not political. “I don’t think of it as a topical movie,” says screenwriter Monahan. “It’s an exciting spy story that very well could have happened during the French Revolution – this cat-and-mouse spy game thing. It would work in almost any context.”
Ignatius says he wasn’t trying to send a message, either.
“As a writer, when you’re trying to capture reality, you’re not making a political statement,” he says. “People can draw political lessons from what they see, and that’s appropriate, but that oversimplifies what I tried to do with the novel.”
Bottom line: Going to the movies is about entertainment, and “Body of Lies,” with its chase scenes, gunplay and intrigue, should deliver plenty for fans of the genre. If it’s dry politics you crave, you’ll just have to go home and turn on your TV.