With its urgent post-9/11 context and often brutal violence, it seems off-key to describe "Body of Lies" as a nifty political thriller, but that's what it is. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Roger Ferris, a crackerjack CIA operative stationed in the Middle East whose handler, Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe), backs him up from Langley by way of a secure phone and all-knowing satellite camera. The team is searching for a powerful al-Qaeda leader who has been masterminding bombings in Europe; the search will take Ferris from Iraq to Jordan to Dubai and finally to Syria in an escalating cat-and-mouse game of deception and mushy moral middle ground.

Adapted from David Ignatius's book by William Monahan ("The Departed") and directed by Ridley Scott, "Body of Lies" clicks along at an engaging pace, legibly limning its multitude of characters and even throwing in a good bit of wry humor. The latter is mostly delivered by Crowe as the doughy, graying Hoffman, a Company lifer who thinks nothing of consigning an ally to death while helping his young son use the toilet. DiCaprio, on the other hand, seems off his game. With an Eddie Munster haircut and weirdly emphatic line readings, he's stiff and uncomfortable compared with Crowe's obvious ease. The scene stealer here is Mark Strong as the silky chief of Jordanian intelligence who forms the seductive hypotenuse of a triangle based on mutual mistrust and ambiguous motivations.

-- Ann Hornaday (Oct. 10, 2008)

Strong violence, including some torture, and profanity throughout.