It seems such a nailed-on hit, Ridley Scott directs Leo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in a film by an oscar winning writer. Sadly though for a film with so much potential it tackles the subject little better than The Kingdom did before it degenerated into a chase movie. The film is about a CIA agent in the middle east (DiCaprio) whose best efforts are continually undermined by his boss (Russell Crowe) who is too detatched in a variety of offices to truly understand what's going on.

This, though, is the film's main problem - the point is so simplistic and so inherently obvious it recalls the worst of Stephen Gaghan's writing in films such as Traffic and Syriana in that it is intellectual counterfeit money - "agents on the ground know more than suits in offices? Tell me something I don't know". It is in itself a decent watch though, DiCaprio is going over similar ground to his performance in The Departed (which screenwriter Bill Monaghan also wrote) although the role here lacks the depth and layers which made his performance in that film better. So while DiCaprio is doing The Departed-light, Crowe is definitely in The Insider-light mode, looking aged and out of shape, being fun as far as it goes but not realising piling on the pounds is not in itself impressive and does nothing for his performance.

Leo DiCaprio & Golshifteh Farahani

The cast is intriguing, obviously the film got made because of Leo and Crowe but the best performances come from the "cheaper" supporting cast. Monaghan is notorious for his inability to draw women and in Golshifteh Farahani, Scott finds an actress capable (due to her natural presence) of adding shade to a role which has no meat on the bones whatsoever. In another similarity to The Kingdom, the performance by a supporting actor in the role of the local lawman (again, knowing more than the agents, who in turn know more than the suits, again, tell me something I don't know ) dwarfs that of the leads. In that film it was Ashraf Barhom, in this film it's Mark Strong, quietly stealing the show as the head of Jordanian intelligence with steel and subtlety.

The film is not as technically impressive as most other Ridley Scott films, but I like that the style is toned down and doesn't distract from the story. The editing is good, it moves at a pace and doesn't flag and what "action" there is is done with skill and gusto. It has too many pretensions and far too weak a screenplay to be a special film, but it does what it says on the tin and was a decent enough way to spend a couple of hours.