Body Of Lies (English - 2008)

Director : Ridley Scott

Cast : Leonardo DiCaprio, Russel Crowe, Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani

Body of Lies is a 2008 English Action Thriller movie directed by Ridley Scott (director of Blade Runner and Gladiator). It is based on a 2007 novel by the same name. It tells the story of three secret service men and their fight against terrorism and themselves. The focus of the movie is on a CIA Agent who works in Jordan to capture a terrorist big fish with the help of the Jordanian secret service.

DiCaprio plays the role of Roger Ferris who is the above mentioned CIA Agent. He works under the supervision of Hoffman (Russel Crowe), and he believes that for his mission to succeed, he should make a good relationship based on trust with the Jordanian General Intelligence Department chief Hani Salaam (Mark Strong). While his attempt was going on, Hoffman runs parallel operations and this irritates Hani who sends Farris out of Jordan. Once out of Jordan, he makes a masterplan which he believed will help them identify where the terrorist big fish Al-Saleem is hiding. For this purpose, they manipulated on a Jordanian architect, and without his knowledge, made him responsible for a fake explosion in the US base in Turkey.

Ferris' calculations proved correct when Al-Saleem himself made conact with the architect. But before he could make any further move, the architect was kidnapped and when forced, he informed them that Ferris could've manipulated him. When Hani came to know about all these things, he decides to play a double game. He makes a deal with Al-Saleem swapping Ferris for money. With the help of an insider in Al-Saleem's group, Hani identifies the hideout where Ferris is being tortured, and reaches just in time with his soldiers to save him and arrest Al-Saleem. Later Ferris decides to quit CIA and he convinces Hoffman that he has taken the right decision. The film ends with Hoffman ordering his operatives to abort tailing Ferris since he is now not part of their organisation.

Most part of the movie is set in the middle east and very often they mention middle east as uncivilized due to the deteriorating human condition there. Also the movie gives an inside view of how the CIA handles their Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) for surveillance and tracking, and how the militants easily fool their tech savvy counterparts by turning their back towards technology. The movie is fast, crisp, entertaining and entirely watchable.

My Rating : Good (***)

Taken (English - 2008)

Taken is a 2008 English action movie. Liam Neeson plays the role of Bryan, an unstoppable and highly trained, but retired, CIA official who follows the kidnappers of his only daughter Kim, played by Maggie Grace. The story is of a kind which we have heard a lot, but its an adrenalin filled movie with lots of action packed moments.

Kim is kidnapped with her friend while on a trip to Paris by some Albanian trafficking mafia. Before being taken away she calls and informs her father Bryan. Bryan decided to enter into the game and by exploiting all the available clues and chances, and with the help of the specially acquired skills from his earlier job as a CIA Agent, Bryan finally reaches his daughter and saves her from the human traffickers. Then he takes her back to her mom and step-dad who are living seperately from Bryan. The film ends with Bryan taking his daughter to a famous singer whose life he had saved earlier while working as her body guard to fulfill her dream of becoming a singer.

Neelson's performance is really good and a really worth attempt is made to match the films with movies like the Bourne Series. But due to the week story line, it fell a little short of that goal. But the movie is good and watchable.

My Rating : Good (***)