Philadelphia Weekly

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Body of Lies
Directed by Ridley Scott
C
Reviewed by Sean Burns
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Like Alec Baldwin, Russell Crowe is way more fun to watch when he's fat. Middle age and excess poundage have worked wonders for these fellows, liberating them from any leading man's vanity of burning intensity, allowing for more playful and inventive performances.

Mephistophelean CIA honcho pulling strings behind the scenes in Ridley Scott's convoluted war on terror thriller Body of Lies, Crowe is a porcine joy. Hoffman operates from the Virginia suburbs, purring catastrophic foreign policy orders through a hands-free cell phone while dragging his kids to soccer practice and constantly shoveling food in his mouth.

Half a world away from our conflict in the Middle East, Hoffman's swaggeringly overconfident regarding life-and-death scenarios barely glimpsed through satellite photos, already an icon of grinning American arrogance long before William Monahan's screenplay breaks down and refers to him as such.

Adapted from a knotty novel by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Body of Lies never quite figures out what to do with Crowe's magnificent creation, apportioning most of the picture to Leonardo DiCaprio's tediously earnest field agent--one who cares enough to speak the local language and remains respectful of foreign customs, much to the chagrin of his D.C. superiors.

Storytelling has never been Ridley Scott's strong suit; he'd rather flash and dazzle. So Body of Lies lurches across exotic locations, piling on the aerial photography and punching up the proceedings with unnecessary, confusingly edited action sequences, eventually settling on a plotline about an hour in.

Too bad they took so long, because it's a pretty good one. DiCaprio tries to smoke a terrorist leader out of hiding by creating a fictional rival cell, engrossing us with savvy deceptions, money trails and Web scams that feel perilously plausible. Such a shame we must simultaneously endure DiCaprio's tacked-on romance with an Iranian doctor, a courtship far less compelling than his increasingly anxious maneuvers around Mark Strong's menacing Jordanian intelligence official.

But Crowe's stranded--stuffing his face on the sidelines, drawling his way through Departed scribe Monahan's delightful profanities, cutting through Body of Lies' murky machinations with acid satire, all but begging for a movie of movie of his own.

Patti Smith: Dream of Life
Directed by Steven Sebring
B-
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Oct. 17

Steven Sebring, director of Patti Smith: Dream of Life, clearly loves Patti Smith. In fact, it often seems as if Sebring is just a pseudonym for Smith herself. Throughout the film, the noted fashion photographer and Smith's longtime friend remains tolerant of the godmother of punk, even at her most obscure and punishingly artsy-fartsy. It's likely all the musician/poet/political activist did for Sebring is pose, chat and pretend not to notice the camera, yet Dream of Life feels less like someone's view of Patti Smith than how Patti Smith views herself.