Tribune – Comment, news and reviews from Britain's democratic left

Body of Lies
US 2008
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Russell Crowe
Director: Ridley Scott

What Just Happened
US 2008
Starring: Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis
Director: Barry Levinson

HAVING tackled the United States’ disastrous 1993 Somalia expedition with so-so results in Black Hawk Down (2001), the ever-busy Sir Ridley Scott now addresses more pressing geo-political affairs with Body of Lies. The script, by William Monahan (also responsible for Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven and Martin Scorsese’s The Departed), is based on a novel by David Ignatius, which was snapped up (and re-titled) by Warner Brothers in 2006 – months before it reached bookshops. At that juncture, studios hadn’t yet twigged that audiences don’t have much appetite for topical Middle-East-themed fare. We get plenty of that from other media, thanks very much. And, with the exception of Syriana and Charlie Wilson’s War – the former at least semi-art-house in its mind-fuddling complexities, the latter taking more of a historical “deep background” approach – picture after topical picture has underperformed at the box-office, including Rendition, Lions For Lambs, A Mighty Heart, The Kingdom and In the Valley of Elah.

Body of Lies has suffered a similar fate, despite heavyweight attractions Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in central roles. And Scott regular Crowe is quite literally a heavyweight here, having pulled a Raging Bull and piled on 50lbs to play CIA bigwig Ed Hoffman, his sedentary avoirdupois a result of his office-based job and cosy family life in the suburbs of Washington DC. This is all in  stark contrast to his man on the ground in the Middle East: ultra-energetic Jordan-based Agency high-flyer Roger Ferris (DiCaprio), who spends most of his waking hours dodging bullets and explosions as he investigates a shadowy terrorist network responsible for  attacks on European targets.

Just as Ferris is an unusually forward-thinking, progressive representative of the American government – Arabic-speaking, he’s attuned to the specifics of local cultures and engages in an appropriately chaste courtship with a Jordanian nurse (Golshifteh Farahani) – Body of Lies feels rather more like an early Barack Obama-era affair than an artefact of the George Bush days. Its attempt to combine brainy analysis with high-octane action sequences doesn’t quite come off, but one can always at least detect evidence of intelligence and ambition amid the twisty shenanigans. Adding a crucial element of class, there is deft support from the currently ubiquitous Mark Strong (as silkily sinister Jordanian security chief), Jamil Khoury (taciturnly imposing as his chief henchman) and Théâtre de Complicité founder Simon McBurney, an delight as one of those eccentric computer boffins which no self-respecting blockbuster can do without.

Nine years ago, David Fincher’s Fight Club was one of those rare films which felt like a cult movie even before it was released – it certainly put Chuck Palahniuk, on whose novel its script was based, on the literary map. Indeed, it’s rather surprising that nearly a decade should have passed before another of his books made it to the big screen. Sad to report that Choke – adapted from Palahniuk’s 2001 novel by Clark Gregg, who also directs and appears in a supporting role – is decidedly underwhelming.

Gregg is one of those “you know, what’s his name” actors who’s carved out a successful career on Hollywood’s sidelines.  On the evidence of Choke – plus Robert Zemeckis’s daft sub-Hitchcock thriller What Lies Beneath (2000), his sole other writing credit – Gregg should really concentrate on his day job. He’s certainly more effective in his thespian duties here – as the hapless protagonist’s smarmy boss, he gives himself, and duly nails, most of the funniest lines – than behind the camera. Then again, it’s debatable whether a more experienced director would be able to do much with the uninvolving exploits of sad-sack protagonist Victor (Rockwell). A self-pitying sex-addict in his late 30s, Victor’s many neuroses stem from his wildly unorthodox childhood (glimpsed in numerous flashback episodes) with his colourfully adventure-prone, mentally-unstable mother (Anjelica Huston) plus the fact that he’s never known his father’s identity. Victor’s numerous “issues” complicate every aspect of his life, including his tentative courtship with Paige (Kelly MacDonald), a demure nurse at the hospital where momma is a fast-fading resident.

There’s potential here for a smart, cynical dissection of contemporary ennui and anomie. However, Gregg, presumably in thrall to Palahniuk’s text, steers down some decidedly unproductive blind alleys. If only the picture was half as clever and controversial as it clearly reckons itself to be. There’s a tiresomely “blasphemous” subplot about Victor’s conception possibly being the result of quasi-divine intervention, for example. The first and second rules of Fight Club were that you couldn’t talk about it – a pity that discussing Choke, while it’s by no means the worst movie around at present, is barely worth the bother.

It’s a little surprising – in a nice way – to see such an ultra-low-budget British movie as Special People trying its luck in commercial distribution. This unassumingly genial satire debuted at last year’s Edinburgh Film Festival, where it attracted notices that were politely encouraging rather than wildly enthusiastic. Although nominally an ensemble piece, first among equals is Jasper (Dominic Coleman) is a pompous but talenteless 30-something “director” whose career highlight came when one of his shorts (a sub-sub-Ken Loachian effort all-too-plausibly entitled “Koncrete Dreamz”) won an award at the 1998 “Film Festival of Walsall”. Proving the wisdom of the old “those who can’t do, teach” dictum, the tetchily impatient Jasper ends up imparting the rudiments of film-making to a group of wheelchair-using youngsters with predictably chaotic results.

Expanded from a short, Special People – shot on what looks like low-end digital video – feels occasionally as thought it’s been padded out in order to reach feature length. Writer-director Justin Edgar devotes precious time to a somewhat half-baked on-off romantic subplot between two of the teenagers (handled convincingly, it must be said, by the appealing performers), when he could more profitably have explored the comic potential in the relationship between Jasper and his semi-reluctant tutees. Edgar’s strengths are in the observational sharpness of his comedy. Many of the movie-making insider gags are, it’s safe to guess, the fruit of his experiences within the industry. And Special People, despite its evidently limited resources  hits the laugh-target with sufficient frequency to ensure it’s a cut above most of the “comic” fare currently infesting multiplex screens.

Hooray for Hollywood? Not if the movies themselves – such as What Just Happened – are any guide. Even before cinema’s headquarters relocated from New York to Los Angeles, the industry has near-invariably presented its own machinations as venal, corrupt, unwholesome and unappetising. This combination of navel-gazing and self-flagellation can occasionally yield bracingly tart fruit, especially if the gazer or flagellator is the rare film-biz insider with a maverick/outsider temperament – see The Player, Robert Altman’s faithful 1992 rendering of Michael Tolkin’s pleasingly sardonic novel.  We’re a long way from that level with What Just Happened, an ill-advised fictionalisation of an emphatically non-fictional memoir by Art Linson. Oddly , the adaptation is “credited” to Linson himself, a veteran producer who – in two persuasive and readable books – chronicled tangles with various tricky and egomaniac talents. Here he’s fictionalised into Ben (Robert De Niro), contending with a hectic private life while sorting out troubled blockbusters starring Sean Penn and Bruce Willis.

Although second-billed, Penn (as himself) makes only fleeting appearances and he’s much less bother than his pretentious English director, Jeremy (Michael Wincott), whose “artistic” vision for (daft-looking) action-thriller “Fiercely” is at odds with the studio’s commercial demands. With weeks to go before a high-profile premiere, emergency re-shoots and re-cuts are on the cards. Willis (as “The Actor”) causes Ben further headaches by refusing to shave off his shaggy beard and generally behaving like a smug, spoiled brat. The elements are thus assembled for what should have been a deliciously acerbic satire. But instead we get a meandering affair that rarely hits the comic target and which, irony of ironies, hasn’t benefited from the re-cutting that reportedly followed its film festival premiere.Wry smiles rather than belly-laughs are the order than the day in a picture that aims for a kind of jazzy looseness – with some flashy visual/editing flourishes – but generally suggests director Barry Levinson had a series of “off” days. And it’s distracting that such eminently recognisable figures – including De Niro – play characters, mingling with other stars who play themselves.

Neil Young