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.
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.