Body of Lies

Body of Lies strives for a gritty, documentary feel, and nails it. Case in point: the lead person gets attacked by guard dogs, and I’m not talking the pumped-up Hollywood types you see in big-budget action flicks. No, these are rangy, slobbering, no doubt flea-infested street fighters, and they do a fine piece of business on the person. In its depictions of dogs’ lives throughout some pretty rough-looking neighborhoods in the Middle East, this movie reminds us that not everyone has a yard to play in and two bowls of kibble a day. As far as I can tell these dogs don’t even have collars, and kudos to the costume department for such attention to detail. I was less pleased when some of the dogs got roughed up, but it’s done pretty realistically and I found myself believing it (and the dog-killing guy never showed up, so I was glad about that). There are also donkeys and heaps of rubbish, both of which had me itching to crawl right into the screen and sniff (there’s a cat too, maybe to enforce a message of equality or something, it didn’t add much to the story). Overall this film continues a “bad dogs” theme we began with Quarantine, and it’s a nice look at some pups who let their inner wolves rule the day (not that we all should; I’m no anarchist). As far as plot goes, we’re presented with more evidence that people are irrational and unpredictable. Every puppy learns not to trust strange people -- you can’t assume they all want to pet you -- and this movie shows why.