Based on nothing but the sum of its A-list parts, 2008 thriller Body of Lies was being predicted as a potential awards season heavy hitter from the second it was first announced, which was a completely fair assumption to make.
After all, Academy Award-winning director Ridley Scott was reuniting with Russell Crowe – who he directed to a Best Actor trophy in Gladiator – with the script marking the first from writer William Monahan since he won an Oscar of his own for penning The Departed.
![Body of Lies](https://wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/body-of-lies-1.jpg)
Then there was the stellar ensemble cast headlined by Leonardo DiCaprio that featured Mark Strong, Oscar Isaac, Michael Keaton, and Annabelle Wallis lending support to name but a scant few, all wrapped up in a topical and timely story that found DiCaprio’s CIA agent concocting a bold scheme to capture a notorious terrorist.
However, nobody could have predicted that Body of Lies would end up sinking without a trace, to the extent that a Reddit thread reminding people of its existence finds several commenters coming clean and admitting it had entirely escaped their memory. A 55 percent Rotten Tomatoes score isn’t a disaster, but it does make it the second worst-reviewed film DiCaprio has appeared in since the year 2000, a remarkable statistic that underlines his method of choosing projects.
It even disappointed at the box office after failing to clear $120 million in ticket sales on an estimated $70 million budget, which just goes to show that all the talent in the world is never going to guarantee an end product that matches.