Leonardo DiCaprio battles the odds in 'Body of Lies'

LEONARDO DiCAPRIO didn't realize he was in over his head until it was too late. "I was constantly fueled with adrenaline," DiCaprio remembers of filming his new espionage thriller, "Body of Lies." "There were certainly moments of sheer anxiety."

He wasn't talking about the physical hardships he endured for director Ridley Scott's homage to such '70s political potboilers as "The Parallax View" and "Three Days of the Condor" -- although the 33-year-old Los Feliz native did endure plenty.

DiCaprio's character, undercover CIA operative Roger Ferris, is treated like a human piñata. He narrowly outruns terrorist bombs, gets torn up by shrapnel in a helicopter missile strike and attacked by a rabid dog while on a covert mission to take down a Middle Eastern terrorist cell. In addition, Ferris must navigate the treacherous shoals of his own government's convoluted agenda in the region, his progress undercut at every step by a ruthless agency station chief played by Russell Crowe.

Based on Washington Post political columnist David Ignatius' novel of the same name, "Body of Lies" makes the harshest appraisal of American foreign policy of any big-budget studio film produced during the second Bush administration. The movie posits that our country has lost its direction in the Middle East, portraying frontline operatives as working without strategy or the necessary willingness to cooperate with foreign governments to achieve peace. "We're waging war in a place we don't entirely understand," said DiCaprio, who consulted with a former head of the CIA in preparation for the role.