Warning to the ladies! Although the new Ridley Scott spy movie, "Body of Lies," stars hunks Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, the duo are not exactly in beefcake roles.

In fact, Crowe's character looks as though he has been eating way too much beef AND cake. He plays Ed Hoffman, a CIA controller who runs his covert operatives (including DiCaprio's Roger Ferris) while living the SUV life in suburban D.C.

Thanks to the high degree of technological sophistication of today's America, Hoffman can order the assassination of suspected Middle Eastern terrorists while sitting in the bleachers of his daughter's soccer game. He uses Ferris (by phone) as though he is playing chess with a master, three continents away. And, in a way, he is.

His distance in miles equates to his distance in emotional involvement in his employees, as he orchestrates the spy game from the comfort of his safe, peaceful neighborhood.

On the opposite side of the world, CIA agent Ferris is deeply involved (literally and emotionally) with people who risk life and limb to keep America a safe, peaceful neighborhood.

And he is not too happy about it. As he watches his associates and informants die amid a constant turmoil of corruption and violence (and personally suffers so much physical torture and harm that it is not surprising that he walks away in the end, but that he can walk at all).

He loses all respect for Hoffman, whose objectivity shows no compassion for his agent or any other human being in the combat zone.

Russell Crowe is an excellent "suit" (behind the scenes supervisor) to DiCaprio's foot soldier. Only Philip Seymour Hoffman, as CIA agent-in-charge Gust Apricots, in last year's "Charlie Wilson's War" makes for a better CIA guy, and although Crowe plays a spy master who has moved up to middle level management, he still gives you the impression that he knows exactly what he is doing.

Sort of like if a modern day Sean Connery played a septuagenarian James Bond, supervising other field agents with all of the confidence of his early "Goldfinger/Dr. No" days (in his best Scottish accent, "Metamusil, shaken, not stirred").

Although DiCaprio's Ferris is always at odds with field supervisor Hoffman, he is exactly like what the older agent was probably like as a young Turk. Competent, confident, knowledgeable and precise.

Minor points scorecard: DiCaprio loses 10 points for the pitiful excuse for a beard (real or make-up?), but gains 20 points for his firearms handling ability during shootouts (so many good action heroes cannot fire a gun believably).

Although Ferris does have a romantic involvement with a beautiful Amman nurse, there are no bedroom scenes and DiCaprio actually shows off his acting talents instead of his romantic prowess.

Unlike his performance in (and I shutter here) "Blood Diamond," DiCaprio's acting here is superb. Director Scott does not give him a stupid foreign accent, but does have DiCaprio speaking fluent Arabic from time to time. Putting him in native dress to impersonate an Arab was a stretch, but overall he is believable as a hardcore young spy in a game of Good Guy vs. Bad Guy.

Other very good performances here include British actor Mark Strong as a very suave head of Jordanian Secret Service and Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani (in her first American film) as the bedroom-eyed nurse that DiCaprio falls in love with.

With only these four actors as the main characters, writer William Monahan weaves David Ignatius' novel around a world of espionage inhabited by a hundred players that remain faceless, as any good spy should.

If you liked this year's earlier Middle Eastern spy movie, "Traitor," you will really enjoy "Body of Lies." If you like the "Bourne" spy movies, you'll like this one, even though it has more substance, and less "bang."

Billy Summers is a freelance photographer who also reviews films for the Putnam Herald. He can be reached at summers855@verizon.net.

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