Ridley Scott's latest thriller doesn’t convince. It’s slick and urgent. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a compelling performance as Roger Ferris, a CIA man enmeshed in webs of betrayal as he tracks al Qaeda in the Middle East. But peep beneath the veneer of topicality, and Body Of Lies looks hollow.

It’s not the portrayal of duplicity within American and Arab security services that grates.
Nor the idea that Roger should be repeatedly stitched up by his boss back home, Russell Crowe’s paunchy Ed Hoffman. These shenanigans happen at street level, divorced from a wider political context.

Scott is interested in the nuanced game of double- and triple-cross. The deserts of Iraq and building sites of Dubai just make a nice backdrop. Where he tried to make an intelligent statement about the Middle East in 2005’s Kingdom Of Heaven, his banal message here is that what goes around, comes around. And despite DiCaprio’s ferocious intensity, one can’t help noticing that Roger is without motivation, substance or credibility.

Crowe’s Hoffman is a zealot. We know this because we see him ordering expedient deaths as he takes his kids to school. Arabic-speaking Roger, however, is supposed to have a conscience, which makes his decision to frame an innocent Arab in order to entrap a terrorist mastermind seem strange.

For a covert operative Roger is also oddly careless. He waltzes around Iraq and Oman with nothing but a wispy beard to disguise his American features, and begins an improbably speedy flirtation with Aisha, a half-Iranian nurse (Golshifteh Farahani). It would almost be better if Aisha were there just to tick the “love interest” box. But she’s an integral part of scriptwriter William Monahan’s daft plot. British actor Simon McBurney turns up, purely so his character and Roger can explain the story to one another, and us.

It’s still possible to enjoy Body Of Lies. DiCaprio and Crowe outstrip the limited resources they’ve been given, and Mark Strong contributes an enjoyable if surprisingly camp cameo as the head of the Jordanian secret service.

Scott directs with typical vigour, transposing beautiful landscapes with massive explosions and scenes of punishing combat and torture which leave DiCaprio’s pretty face and body mangled to an extent unrivalled even by Daniel Craig’s Bond. Behind all the bombast, though, this leaves one feeling vaguely cheated.

Body Of Lies goes on general release on 21 November.