Previews for Ridley Scott's “Body of Lies” live up to the title. The preview makes it appear as though the movie is a deathly battle between Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe, with the former working as a cell-phone-toting CIA agent in the Middle East and the latter lording over him menacingly from a satellite-view control center.

Warner Bros. Leonardo Decaprio (right) is a CIA operative in the Mideast, and Mark Strong the head of Jordanian intelligence in "Bodies of Lies."

That's the bodacious lie the producers use to get you into the theater: Who wouldn't want to see DiCaprio vs. Crowe in a battle of wits?

The truth is, “Body of Lies” only has incidental use for good guys and bad guys. Sure, it's an espionage thriller with its share of chases, gunfights, bombings and RPG attacks, not to mention a finger-crushing torture scene that makes Rutger Hauer's breaking Harrison Ford's digits in “Blade Runner” look like a game of tiddlywinks.

At heart, though, the film (and the David Ignatius novel from which it's adapted) is a war of perspectives. DiCaprio, working on the ground, forges intimate connections and sympathies with the Arabs he recruits as operatives, while Crowe's senior commander back in Virginia couldn't care less – he just wants to rack up a few more successes than failures so he can compile them in a report and get home in time to take his kids to see “The Lion King.”

DETAILS “Body of Lies” Rating: R When: Opens tomorrow Running time: 2 hr., 8 min.

If Crowe's character is evil, then it's a casual, middle-management type of evil that results from systemic indifference and lack of accountability. He symbolizes much of what's gone wrong with U.S. foreign policy over the past several years, including its emphasis on long-distance technology over face-to-face intelligence.

Here, Crowe (who put on 50 pounds and affects a blasé Southern demeanor reminiscent of late actor J.T. Walsh) has reached the Peter Principle in his job, but the people he answers to are easily swayed by his anti-terrorist rhetoric, and he's become an expert at rationalizing his failures. Whenever Crowe's bad calls result in Middle Eastern civilian deaths, he shakes it off by repeating his mantra of “Nobody's innocent in this (stuff).” Then he drives his kids to soccer practice.

DiCaprio spends much of the movie disproving Crowe's cynicism, and he exhibits the same scrappy intensity on display in “The Departed” (both films share the same screenwriter, William Monahan, who seems to take great joy in pulverizing his heroes).

When first we meet DiCaprio he's befriending a linguistics Ph.D. in Iraq who hopes turning informant will be his ticket out of the country. After that goes wrong, the wounded DiCaprio relocates to Amman, Jordan, to track an apparent safe house for a terrorist group that has been bombing various targets in Europe.

Additional wounds bring DiCaprio in contact with a Persian nurse (played by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani), who's destined to become a romantic interest since she's nearly the only female in the movie and she's prettier than Queen Rania. Farahani's playful nephews, who love soccer and hamburgers as much as Crowe's children do, drive home the movie's view of shared humanity.

The film's best character, and its saving grace when the Crowe/DiCaprio conflict comes up short, is the Jordanian head of intelligence, played with perfect, imperious pitch by Mark Strong.

Strong is immaculately dressed with a politely powerful demeanor and makes a fine counterpoint to Crowe's crude First World intimidations. DiCaprio's relationships with each parallel his understanding of two cultures.

The movie leaves it an open question whether either Crowe or Strong can be trusted, and the eventual answers, as nuanced as a Graham Greene story, make “Body of Lies” worth watching.

Where “Body of Lies” fizzles is in its use of a shapeless, sprawling (locations include Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Qatar and Dubai) narrative that weighs incidental details and dramatic high points equally.

Scott's last film, “American Gangster,” had a similar weakness, briskly carrying us through a flat series of events that offered clarity but only low-level cinematic pleasure.

There are isolated exceptions: A memorable scene depicts a desert caravan of black SUVs circling in the dust to confuse satellite surveillance, much like Native Americans outsmarting cowboys.

But “Body of Lies” is mind-parchingly dry compared to a film like “Munich,” which had an ambitious use of visual symbolism to go with its moral ambivalence, and a palpable sense of local flavor that kept it from seeming, as “Body of Lies” sometimes does, like a travelogue.

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