I'm starting to get what and especially why people praised Leonardo Di Caprio so much. He really holds the movie together here. It's a great script story, but with his charismatic performance he really gives it the extra edge it needs.

Ridley Scott has chosen a very peculiar story for (t)his movie. But he really treats it with much respect. His visual sense and his story-telling mastery combined with a great cast and the aforementioned script make up for a very interesting, entertaining, but still very complex and sophisticated! It's not something you can watch in-between doing other things. You do have to pay attention to what is happening to follow the story/plot. And I liked that very much :o)

I've been trying a simple way to explain the plot but its not that easy and its hung up my review of the film for sometime. I can either be very simple and not give you a flavor for the film or I can tell you too much. After much deliberation I'm going to go simple.

A CIA agent played by Leonardo DiCaprio who is operating in Iraq get wind of a terrorist organization that maybe working out of Jordan. with the help, hindrance and manipulation of his boss back in the US (Russell Crowe) DiCaprio attempts to penetrate and stop the group before they can kill any more people.

That does the film no justice, so let me say that this is the first film dealing with Iraq in a good long while that doesn't feel like a retread or cliché. Its also the first film to deal with the war that will play well as a spy movie when divorced of its subject. Yea its about the war and yea it has implications, but at the same time its a damn fine modern spy thriller and will in the end be remembered as that in ten years time. The cast is wonderful, even if Crowe's and DiCaprio's accents wander in and out. See the film because its a thriller not because its Iraq related.

To be certain its not a perfect film, there are a few spy genre clichés it stumbles over but for the most part its a movie to watch with a big soda and a tub of popcorn.

Recommended.