Normally I would not comment on a movie like this because it is just another over-the-top potboiler I watched on HBO without much interest. It has a certain topical feel, however, and I was much taken by what seem to be authentic references to actual places and events. And it does contain evidence of a great deal of skill put forth by its producers and directors among others in crafting the thing in such a way as to demand the viewer's attention to its technical merits. As an example I mention a scene photographed in part from the air in which the protagonist as played by DiCaprio is spirited away to a presumed secret meeting with the good/bad guys out on the desert. It involves a genuinely amusing mixture of visual deception and constant action.
Indeed constant action is the one element that holds an otherwise thin plot together. DiCaprio as a kind of Tom Cruise/Daniel Craig/Matt Damon superhero shows us a few new angles to standard laid-back emoting, though his vocal range as usual needs further work in the manner of Demosthenes or at least Richard Burton. A silly and sentimental love story intrudes on an otherwise straightforward portrayal of American spies in over their head against insidious and treacherous enemies/friends, with Russell Crowe in a throwaway performance designed, one supposes, as a kind of casting against type.
Something to watch on a snowy evening as a desert antidote to the cold.
Indeed constant action is the one element that holds an otherwise thin plot together. DiCaprio as a kind of Tom Cruise/Daniel Craig/Matt Damon superhero shows us a few new angles to standard laid-back emoting, though his vocal range as usual needs further work in the manner of Demosthenes or at least Richard Burton. A silly and sentimental love story intrudes on an otherwise straightforward portrayal of American spies in over their head against insidious and treacherous enemies/friends, with Russell Crowe in a throwaway performance designed, one supposes, as a kind of casting against type.
Something to watch on a snowy evening as a desert antidote to the cold.