11/ 6/2005 11:37 PM
The word on Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (Warner Bros., 11.23) is gaining, building...taking a surprising turn. And right at the top of the really-recommended list is the performance by Fat Clooney. I love that name...that's what's been missing all along...a pot belly...a belly like a bowl of jello...tell him to drop the "George," stay fat as a cow and totally become this other guy. "Fat Clooney is one of the greatest things you'll see in a movie all year," claims a reputable journo- acquaintance. "They've had some Syriana screenings...at least two that I know of"...Cynthia Swartz says it's been shown only to people who can't wait..."and I thought the film was fucking fantastic. F.X. Feeney tells me it's his favorite of the year so far. It struck me as Traffic before the script got developed and slightly defanged. It's political, as you said, but more than that...it's angry. Very, very angry."

"M": I saw Steve Gaghan’s film last night... SYRIANA...

DA: Oh, yeah?

"M": ... and there’s a sequence involving Matt Damon’s kid that just... destroyed me...

DA: Oh, my god... [laughs]

"M": I know. I know.

DA: Don't print that. They'll call you a wimp.
[D'oh! - "M"]

"M": I know.

DA: How is SYRIANA?

"M": Really good. I'm still digesting it.

DA: Fantastic. I sort of know Steve. We shared DPs...

"M": It's very TOUCH OF EVIL.

DA: Oh, great. Great. That's fantastic. That's quite a comparison. I can't wait to see it. Warner Bros. hasn't let me see it yet. When's it coming out? Couple of weeks from now, right?

"M": Yeah. End of this month, I think. Limited.

"Syriana," written and directed by Stephen Gaghan and produced by (among others) Clooney and Soderbergh, takes place very much in the present. Loosely based on the memoirs of Robert Baer, a C.I.A. officer, its four entwined plots deal with Islamic terrorism, American foreign policy and the machinations of big oil companies - all of which swirl together in a nexus of double-dealing and moral ambiguity.

...

"Syriana," with its sun-bleached desert colors, works almost in reverse, setting up expectations of clarity and systematically undermining them, suggesting that the world consists entirely of gray areas, interlocking conspiracies and ulterior motives. Invoking the conventions of the political thriller even as it departs from them, the film depicts a world in which paranoia is common sense and conspiracies are hatched in daylight.

I've recently seen a no-pulse, no-conflict, Waiting-for-Godot Middle East film (Sam Mendes' Jarhead) and a complex, multi-layered, altogether fascinating one about the pernicious social and political political effects of big oil (Stephen Gaghan's Syriana)...and leapin' lizards, talk about a night-and-day response.

I'll be waiting until 11.23 before running a Syriana review, but it's obviously a far better film.

...

Syriana, which Gaghan researched in the Middle East for a full year, is a geo-political spellbinder that doesn't feel the least bit dated. The story could have happened last summer, or even a year or two from now.

Syriana: A world where only oil matters

Stephen Gaghan's Syriana is complex, grim, intense and takes on Big Oil politics

Friday, November 18, 2005
John Mark Butterworth


Stephen Gaghan's Syriana is complex, grim, intense, but unfortunately, ultimately empty. Using similar sharp plotting techniques as in his script for Traffic, there is detachment and coldness in his cinematography illustrated in a bluish tint to Americans in many scenes, and a hazy sepia or golden tone in scenes with Islamic characters which, while imparting a warmer glow seems gritty, dusty, and menacing.
In Syriana he takes on Big Oil politics as he did illegal drug cartels, Mexican and American governments, corruption, and the drug runners and their law enforcement adversaries. Here we have Middle East terrorists, the CIA opposing them, conflicting Saudi princes vying to be king, an oil company merger facing Congressional oversight and investigation for questionable practices in securing contracts in Kazakhstan.

Although featuring a few stars, the movie is primarily an ensemble piece where no one in particular gets a great deal of screen time although the CIA agent (George Clooney) and energy analyst (Matt Damon) stories are more fleshed out and pivot points to the many interwoven plots.

The movie begins with miserable and poor Pakistanis in the Saudi desert competing for a few jobs in the oil industry and then cutting to Bob Barnes (Clooney) in Tehran making a deal to sell stingers to Iranian arms dealer. It's a set up to assassinate the dealers, but one of the weapons is split off to another group, and that weapon is not destroyed in the operation but ends up in the hands of Islamicists in Saudi Arabia. This is the famous Chekhovian dictum that a gun placed on the mantel in the first act must be used in the third act.

The first half of the movie is smart, crisply paced, introduces many characters with brevity, and even includes completely tangential story lines such as an investigative lawyer whose alcoholic father keeps showing up on his doorstep for no other reason than to suggest that this man has an anguished back story, and is thus more human to the audience. The tactic doesn't really work because the movie, as I said above, is cold and detached in its treatment of everyone.

Two characters are presented as ostensibly better people than others. The CIA agent and a Saudi prince who wants to reform the Kingdom socially and economically.



They're all bad guys, the director answers. Then what's the point of the movie? Oh, to try and show you how Stephen Gaghan thinks life really is like. Oil is bad. Business is bad. Government is bad. Muslims are bad (but poor and oppressed so maybe not as bad). The CIA is bad. Financial advisors are bad and Arab kingdom and culture is bad.

This is a deeply cynical movie that devolves in its second half into thoroughly confused politics.

In a brief monologue, one character (Tim Blake Nelson) captures a theme of the film when charged with corruption and he answers, "Corruption charges . . . corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That's Milton Friedman. He got a god****ed Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over some scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win."

This is reminiscent of Gordon Gekko's, "greed is good" speech in Wall Street, or Ned Beatty's Arthur Jensen in Network to Howard Beale on the economic elemental forces of the universe

This corruption speech is banal, though. It's lazy and sophomoric cynicism.

Another character remarks to Clooney who's facing an FBI probe, "In this town (Washington, D.C.), everyone is innocent until investigated." That's a good line.

One of the sort of better guys presented is the Saudi prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) who wants to be a benevolent king when he gets to rule and transform his country into a modern state with sexual and political equality; except on the other hand, he wants to deal with the Chinese at the expense of American interests to his regret (to put it mildly).

The climax of the movie is played out a bit like The Godfather with inter-cutting between fatal conclusions and a commonplace affair. A boisterous and cheery oil men's award dinner for the fat cats full of glow in their corrupt success while two other threads culminate in violence.

Mr. Gaghan is a talented, but soulless writer. Syriana has no moral core of any kind so it cannot present a perch on which to judge anyone or any event it depicts. In seeking ambiguity in every frame and storyline, no sympathy is aroused in the viewer. Only some occasional pity. Terrible things occur, yet nothing is tragic since it all takes place in a world where no one matters. Oil matters. Money matters. Ambition matters. But no person matters. They are all interchangeable and dispensable.

Adding the odd touch here and there: the CIA agent's son who is a bit spoiled; the lawyer and his drunken dad; the financial advisor and his grief -- these are meant to add depth and flesh, but merely expose themselves as devices to evoke sympathy without delivering the goods.

Syriana is a ghost world where people don't play out their lives, but their worst drives. It's very well made but has all the depth of a comic book thriller.

Syriana B+
Writer-director Stephen Gaghan, winner of the 2000 Screenplay Oscar for "Traffic," has chosen as his follow-up project "Syriana," a political thriller that unfolds against the intrigues and corruption of the global oil industry. The film's multiple plots weave together a complex tale that illuminates the consequences of the fierce pursuit of wealth and power, from the players brokering back-room deals in Washington to the men toiling in the old fields of the Persian Gulf.

Similar in structure, but more ambitious and complex than "Traffic," "Syriana" is a politically engaged film-essay that approximates reportage journalism rather than epic cinema or political thriller, though elements of those formats are also evident. Upping the ante of "Traffic," which was comprised of three interrelated stories, Gaghan has constructed a tangled political network that involves over 70 speaking parts.

Though Gaghan cites Costa-Gavras' "Z" and American political films of the 1970s as sources of inspiration, his film is very different. There are no clearly defined heroes or villains in "Syriana," no effort to provide an objective perspective on the story, and certainly no neat resolution. Multi-nuanced and ambiguous in text and subtext, "Syriana" aims at a non-melodramatic cinema, one that provides only basic motivations for its characters but no emotional pay-off. Psychology, identification, and emotion, three tenets of classic Hollywood cinema are undermined and even subverted here in favor of a more neutral and detached mode of filmmaking that allows for various interpretations of the story.

The movie, which runs only two hours, may be too short to accomplish all its goals, and, indeed, in moments, the subject matter seems more appropriate for a TV mini-series than a feature. Nonetheless, an impressive achievement, "Syriana" may be the first American film to reflect through its anatomy of the global oil industry the state of the world, as we know it today, in the post Sep. 11 era.

The intrigue begins in an unnamed oil-producing Gulf country, where a young, charismatic and reform-minded Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) is seeking to change long-established relationships with the U.S. business interests. Nasir, the apparent heir to the throne, has just granted gas-drilling rights--long held by the Texas energy giant Connex--to a higher bid from China. This act is perceived as a huge blow not only to Connex but also to the American business interests in the region.

Cut to Killen, a smaller Texas oil company owned by Jimmy Pope (Chris Cooper), who has just won the competitive drilling rights to coveted fields in Kazakhstan. This makes Killen very attractive to Connex, which now needs new territory to maintain its production capacity. When the two companies merge, the pending deal attracts the scrutiny of the Justice Department, and Sloan Whiting, a powerful white-show Washington law firm, is brought in to perform due diligence.

The closest the film comes to have a nominal hero and dramatic center is Bob Barnes (George Clooney), a vet CIA agent nearing the end of a long and respectable career, with a son headed for college and the possibility of spending the latter years of his service in a comfy desk job. Bob is depicted as an idealist, a devoted company man who has always believed that his work benefits his government and makes his country a safer place to live.

But alas in Bob's last assignment, which involved the assassination of arms dealers in Tehran, a Stinger missile falls into the hands of a mysterious Egyptian. On his return to Washington, Bob is promised a promotion after one last undercover mission: Assassinating Prince Nasir. However, when one of his oil fields contacts turns on him, and the assassination attempt goes awry, Bob is scapegoated by the CIA, betrayed by the organization to which he has devoted his life.

Clooney plays an updated role of the CIA agents and investigators that Robert Redford and Warren Beatty played in the conspiracy films of the 1970s, such as "Three Days of the Condor" and "The Parallax View." Searching to understand what has happened, Bob undergoes a process of disillusionment, realizing that he has been lied to, used as a pawn, and that he never really was privy to the motivation for the assignments he has blindly carried out for years.

Though not dwelling on them, Gaghan doesn't neglect the personal lives of his protagonists. This is particularly the case of energy analyst Bryan Goodman (Matt Damon), a rising star at Energy Trading Company, living with his wife Julie (Amanda Peet, one of the two women in the film) and their two young sons in Geneva. Attending a pool party given by Prince Nasir's family, a tragic incident results in the death of Bryan's younger son and causes a rift in the marriage. To make amends for the accident, Nasir offers Bryan a business opportunity to help the young leader realize his reformist idea, an opportunity that Bryan embraces to the dismay of his grieving wife.

Intergenerational conflict also describes the father-son relationship of Bob and his son Bobby (Max Minghella), who just wants to leave a normal life instead of moving from one place to another with his father, and the troubled relationship between Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) and his father. Put in charge of the delicate task of guiding the Connex-Killen merger, Bennett is a Washington attorney at Sloan Whiting who needs to give the Justice department enough material to make their case against Killen for its shady dealings in Kazakhstan without jeopardizing the entire deal. It's in the company and country's interests that the merger goes through, and it also serves Bennett's personal ambitions, which are fueled by a father (William C. Mitchell) he's at odds with.

Functioning as Bennett's surrogate father is Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer), Bennett's boss, the head of the firm and one of Washington's most powerful men. Trying to undo Nasir's deal with the Chinese, Dean knows that Nasir's younger, more callow brother, Prince Meshal (Akbar Kurtha), will be more amenable to American business interests, and he pressures the aging Emir to choose Meshal to succeed him, thus effectively engineering Nasir's political demise.

Just in case you thought that "Syriana" is all about the politics of nation-states, Gaghan introduces the variables of social class and class conflict in the form of migrant laborers in Nasir's country, whose lives are directly affected by the royal family's policies and the industry's vagaries. Connex workers Saleem Ahmed (Shahid Ahmed) and his son Wasim (Mazhar Munir) have just been laid off from their jobs in the fields when the Chinese take them over. Their future becomes more uncertain as they search in vain for work, before their visas expire. Saleem dreams of returning to Pakistan, whereas his son hopes for a better life, though becomes quickly disillusioned and angry at the way they are treated.

"Syriana" is loosely based on CIA Agent Bob Baer's memoir, "See No Evil," though Clooney's character, Bob Barney, is fictional. The book helped Gaghan understand the web of players in the Middle East and in the oil business, and ultimately led to his choice to tell the story through multiple narratives. Gaghan has researched the film for a year and a half before beginning to work on the screenplay. During that time, he investigated the inner workings of the oil industry in the U.S., as well as journeying in the UK, France, Italy, Switzerland, Lebanon, Syria, Dubai, and North Africa, where he interviewed people at every level of the power chain that makes up the petroleum industry.

It's impossible to do justice to the complex story of a film that unfolds as a puzzle, and the audience is required to put all the pieces together. Suffice is to say that "Syriana" encompasses sheiks and field workers, government inspectors and international spies, rich and poor, the famous and infamous, each playing their small part in a vast system that makes up the contemporary global oil industry. None of the participants sees the big picture, and none realizes the true extent of the explosive impact their lives will have upon the world.

Several of my colleagues found "Syriana" too complex and confusing too, since the movie consists of over 100 scenes, some of which last only seconds. Admittedly, "Syriana" is a tough movie to watch. It demands our attention; it's not the kind of movie that you sit back and enjoy. That said, do not worry if at the end of the film you'll find yourself agitated and dissatisfied, for "Syriana" refuses to make fast accusations or provide easy solutions. The movie ends in a logical way, but it's not a clear or neat closure.

Underlining "Syriana" is a very liberal and democratic ideology. By placing the stories next to each other, Gaghan makes us think about our connections to the whole. "Syriana" uses ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances to explore the idea that personal responsibility does matter, that our daily choices contributes to where we are on a global level. It's through these characters' everyday lives that we are able to enter into a world that at first blush seems abstract and remote, but is relevant, because this nexus of oil interests, terrorism, and the possibility of democracy in the Middle East affect our economy as well as our personal and collective psyche.


2004-2005 © Emanuel Levy

Looks like the team at Hollywood Elsewhere is pretty excited about Syriana. Here are a few tidbits from the most recent column:
Note that the full review won't be up until November 23, the day that Syriana opens in limited release. This seems to be a directive from Warner Bros. and part of their marketing/Oscar campaign, which explains why we aren't seeing any full-on reviews yet. Still, the buzz that is leaking from those who have seen the film is generally positive.

Clooney’s New Movie: ‘Fahrenheit 411’

Saturday, November 19, 2005

By Roger Friedman

Basically, in "Syriana," writer/director Stephen Gaghan (the Oscar-winning adapter of "Traffic"), former CIA agent Bob Baer, and producers George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh have made a thriller for people who read The Financial Times. It’s also a companion piece in many ways to a great movie Clooney starred in several years ago, "Three Kings." Shot in Morocco and Dubai, "Syriana" may be an eye opener to westerners who don’t give much thought to world events.

"Syriana" was screened Friday night at Cinema 2, a sort of bunker movie theater in a basement, while upstairs in Cinema 1 Clooney’s "Good Night and Good Luck" was doing sold out business. Upstairs: the paying public. Downstairs: as much media elite as could fit in a room, with Robin and Marsha Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Mike Myers, Amy Irving, Nora Ephron, Jason Lewis, Catherine Crier and Lisa Bloom of Court TV, plus lots of editor/writer types and quite a few Academy voters.

ABC News chief David Westin moderated a panel after the screening with Clooney, Gaghan, and Baer fielding questions.

It was the first totally finished print, Gaghan told us, completed last Tuesday at 2:30pm. The last thing he did was pick the font for the closing credits. (It’s from a restaurant in Venice called Axe and pronounced ah-shay.) He started working on the film in 2001, and did a massive amount of travel and research with the help of former CIA agent Baer, upon whose book, "See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism," the movie is largely based.

In case you’re interested in this: the CIA has not seen the movie nor approved the script because Baer didn’t write it. They did vet his book, in which you will find many redacted pages with big, black markings covering sensitive material.

"Syriana" is a thriller but it can be a bit confusing. The basic story is that an oil company has set up shop in the Gulf, just as a merger is going through. The local royal Arab family is in the middle of a succession as the Emir (king) is about to step aside for one of his two sons: an idiot, and a sensitive, forward thinker. (Guess who gets the job.) Clooney plays a CIA agent who’s a little over the hill and washed up. But he’s onto the fact that the government and the oil companies are trying to stay in control through the manipulation of who becomes king.

There are murders and international intrigue, as well as two subplots. One involves Matt Damon as an American derivatives trader living in Geneva with his beautiful wife (Amanda Peet) and their two very cute little boys. The other is about two young Arab men looking for work and being courted by fringe terrorist groups. Damon is so good that he is likely to get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his work. Of Clooney’s whole "Ocean’s 11" posse, Damon is easily the most talented.

"He’s it, the real thing," Clooney said when we talked about Damon.

Damon is a standout, but there are plenty of "smaller" roles played by terrific actors including Tom McCarthy, Chris Cooper, Christopher Plummer, Mazhar Munir, Jeffrey Wright, Tim Blake Nelson (who has a funny speech explaining the historical importance of corruption) and the memorable Alexander Siddig (as the smart prince). Indeed, the actors are so uniformly good from the start that they all seem very real, as does the situation. This is ‘Fahrenheit 411’, meaning full of urgent information that rings true in every scene. Liberals and conservatives all have to put gas in their cars. One look at the prices, and you know that "Syriana" is not far off base.

Clooney was there with an unidentified blonde who sat in the back during the Q&A with a black hat pulled down to hide her face. He gained 30 pounds to play a fictionalized Bob Baer. On screen he looks and feels bloated, sporting a gray beard and effecting almost a waddle. His character is no joke, though. He’s Jack Lemmon from "The China Syndrome," a whistle blower who wakes up too late to realize his whole life has been a sham. It’s Clooney’s best and most coherent work on the big screen, and should get him a Best Actor nomination and lots of rave reviews.

"Syriana" is not always easy to follow. Sometimes I felt like I needed a study guide. But Gaghan has made such an engrossing film that you can actually suspend disbelief and just go with it. Once you’re in, you’re in, too. I don’t know if it will make money or be a Best Picture candidate, but "Syriana" is the most intelligent movie of 2005 so far, and incredibly satisfying.

One note though: I would change that poster and ad showing a blind-folded, bearded man. It’s a huge turn-off. It looks like a torture documentary or a prisoner of war saga. Warner Bros. would do well to sell "Syriana" as a thriller soap opera with intrigue, a la "Three Days of the Condor," and make sure to put Damon and Peet’s pictures in there with Clooney’s.

Clooney, you might like to know, also told me after the screening that the recent blow up he had in London was considerably different than the way it was portrayed in the British press and consequently, in our tabloids. "It was just a guy who was a jerk," he said of the photographer who cornered him in an alley. "I thought about hitting him, but I didn’t."

the memorable Alexander Siddig (as the smart prince)

I saw a preview of Syriana tonight in New Haven, and I think the Oscar talk's warranted. Siddig has a very meaty and well-written role, and does an exceptionally good job with it: he gives the character of Prince Nasir considerable depth, intelligence, authenticity, and passion. And I say that not as a fanboy.

The movie's quite good overall; very nuanced, very morally ambiguous. It's fairly obvious that the director was involved with Traffic, but the model works here. If the film strikes a chord critically and commercially, as it may well, then I think Siddig has a very real chance at a nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Syriana
A Film Review by James Berardinelli
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You may have to look long and hard to find a 2005 movie with as cynical an outlook on global politics as Syriana. Sadly, this is a situation when the cynicism is understandable. In addition to painting a bleak picture, Syriana makes no concessions to impatient audiences or viewers with short attention spans. The density of narrative is remarkable considering the Hollywood trend toward simplification. This movie is plot-driven from start to finish, and it needs all 126 minutes to tell the whole story. It takes approximately three-quarters of that time before we see the pattern as more than just a random interweaving of threads. Give up on or lose track of Syriana and the payoff won't be as forceful.

The relationship between the arms industry and the armed forces is often referred to as the "military-industrial complex" (a term coined in one of President Eisenhower's last speeches to the nation). The general thinking is that the military's need to amass the newest and best weapons keeps the economy going and positively impacts the health of thousands of American corporations. But the reality, at least as depicted in Syriana, is more complicated. It's not just that the need for a strong economy demands a strong military, but that the greed and influence of Big Business (especially the oil industry) sets policy. The relationship between major corporations and the government isn't incestuous, because the politicians are pawns, not bedfellows. Government doesn't do what's best for the people; it does what's best for Big Business, with enough occasional misdirection, grandstanding, and sleight of hand to dupe the voters into believing they're in charge. Ultimately, it's not a question of Democrats or Republicans - both are controlled by the same underlying forces. This is Syriana's thesis, and it stands the test of being applied to today's real-world global politics.

Syriana is not non-fiction. It has been "suggested" by Robert Baer's factual See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism, but writer/director Stephen Gaghan (who wrote Traffic) uses Baer's book as a starting point. Although the story applies real-world parallels, it is made-up. But that doesn't lessen its impact or its capacity to generate discussion. Most depressing of all may be Syriana's conclusion that the problem has become so deeply rooted that nothing can dislodge it. Cynical or realistic? Sometimes, it's hard to differentiate.

Providing a synopsis of Syriana would be an exercise in futility. The film is too complex for that. Instead, I'll provide an encapsulation of the set-up. There are three major strands to the plot. The first involves a long-time Middle East CIA operative, Bob Barnes (George Clooney), who is cut loose by the government as soon as he becomes a liability. (You didn't think the government was loyal to its employees?) The second focuses on the merger of two major American oil companies, Connex and Killen. Killen is the lesser of the giants, but it has acquired drilling rights in Kazakhstan that make it an attractive partner. Chris Cooper plays the CEO of Killen and Jeffrey Wright is a lawyer brought in to investigate the proposed merger. Finally, there's Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Alexander Siddig), the next-in-line to become Emir of an unnamed, oil-rich country. Prince Nasir is reform-minded, and believes that what is best for his people is not knuckling under to the United States. He intends to get value for his country's oil, and this makes him unpopular amongst those with real power.

The structure of Syriana has similarities to Traffic, and that's unsurprising considering that Gaghan penned both scripts. Each includes large numbers of characters gradually moving on a semi-collision course. The setup is long and a little laborious, but it's necessary. This is Gaghan's second directorial outing (his debut was 2002's Abandon). Unlike Steven Soderbergh, who helmed Traffic (and serves as an Executive Producer on this film), Gaghan shies away from visual flourishes. As a result, Syriana has what can best be described as a traditional or "straightforward" look and feel.

The cast is a mix of A-list actors and relative unknowns, and there isn't a weak performance to be found. Even those often thought of as light-weights, such as Matt Damon and Amanda Peet (playing an American "energy analyst" and his wife), have been given roles in which they can shine. The brightest lights are George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, and Alexander Siddig, all of whom deserve recognition (if not by the Academy then by those who see this film). Clooney steps outside his usual image, sporting a scruffy beard and having gained 35 pounds. This is not an heroic role, but he does what's required, and it may open eyes. Wright approaches his part in a low-key manner, but there's a coldness and urgency to the portrayal that we don't fully understand until the film is nearly over. Siddig, who cut his teeth in the TV series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and was impressive earlier this year in Kingdom of Heaven, makes Prince Nasir into a charismatic and determined individual. Actors like Chris Cooper, Christopher Plummer, and William Hurt have smaller, but not necessarily less important, parts.

Syriana will be a polarizing motion picture, pitting defenders of the establishment against those on the other side. Some will declare that it's the first movie to dare to tell the truth. Others will blast it as liberal propaganda dreamed up by conspiracy theorists. Either way, it's an intensely fascinating look behind a curtain where few of us feel comfortable enough to peer. And one doesn't have to agree with Gaghan's conclusions to be swept along by Syriana's dramatic momentum. I believe that much of Oliver Stone's JFK is well constructed fiction, but that doesn't prevent it from being compelling and a source of endless speculation and interest.

Syriana is an adult motion picture, made with mature viewers in mind. It contains elements of a thriller, but isn't one in a traditional sense. There is no instant gratification. The film challenges its audience and forces them to make their own determinations about the validity of what it proposes. It's a wake-up call. In today's environment, it's a rare thing to find a movie with interesting characters in dense, intelligent storylines, but that's what Syriana offers. It is one of the best films of 2005.


© 2005 James Berardinelli

James Berardinelli's Review:

‘Syriana’ runs on a full tank of ideas
Stephen Gaghan’s intelligent thriller begs for an even longer run time

REVIEW
By David Germain
The Associated Press
Updated: 7:03 p.m. ET Nov. 21, 2005


Writer-director Stephen Gaghan has a full tank of ideas in “Syriana,” a tale of oil-industry corruption and conspiracy whose story is almost too dense and taxing for the average guy at the pumps.

The filmmaker applies the multiple story lines, far-flung locations and detached-observer perspective he used in Steven Soderbergh’s drug drama “Traffic,” whose screenplay earned Gaghan an Academy Award.

The effect may not be as sharp and street-level emotional as “Traffic,” yet “Syriana” weaves powerful moments of pathos, compassion, and cross-cultural insight into its lesson on the realities of greed in international commerce.

Anyone who grouses that Hollywood dumbs everything down should check out “Syriana,” a fiercely intelligent thriller that puts audiences through a challenging mental workout to decipher and digest its intricate ideas and dialogue.

It’s impossible to absorb it all in a single viewing, and so much is packed into such a tight space that “Syriana” occasionally feels too truncated, like a two- or three-night miniseries clipped to fit a movie-of-the-week time slot.

Still, Gaghan injects so much personality into his characters — and the cast led by George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper and Amanda Peet embody them so richly — that a great deal of humanity shines through in what otherwise could have been an academic exercise.

As “Traffic” did with drug smugglers and government enforcers, “Syriana” wanders among the shadowy parties that open or tighten the spigots on petroleum running to the refineries, from corporate board rooms to federal agencies to the palaces of Arab royalty.

Anchoring the story is Clooney as CIA career man Bob Barnes, a character inspired by intelligence agent Robert Baer and his memoir “See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism” (Clooney and Soderbergh turned Gaghan on to the book, and their production company helped produce the film).

Barnes is a dutiful trooper and supremely competent in often dastardly undercover missions in the Middle East, where he seems more at home than among the Washington political tricksters who pull his strings.

His seen-it-all demeanor is balanced by the naivete of young energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Damon), who takes his wife (Peet) and family along on a trip to pursue a Mideast business opportunity. Woodman forges an unexpected bond with a reformist Arab prince (Alexander Siddig) seeking to put his country on a progressive economic and social footing.

Swirling through this world are the special interests — Cooper as the head of a Texas oil company about to consolidate with a global rival, Wright as an attorney trying to maneuver the merger to federal regulatory approval, and Christopher Plummer as his boss, a slick lawyer manipulating internal Mideast politics to the advantage of U.S. business interests.

Plummer is simply chilling in a relatively small role as a corporate predator who comes bearing a soft smile and a handshake, while William Hurt as a shady Clooney ally and Tim Blake Nelson as an oil-industry sleaze make strong impressions in even more fleeting roles.

Behind a bushy, grizzled beard, Clooney is a gripping presence despite his character’s utter lack of showiness. Clooney plays him as the stoic opposite of his P.T. Barnum ringleader in the “Ocean’s Eleven” movies, a workmanlike believer who goes about his job as a matter of philosophical conviction.

Wright delivers the most well-rounded performance, subtly capturing the inner conflict of a man trying to reconcile personal ambition with distaste for the world in which he thrives.

Gaghan tosses in a couple of seriously undercooked side stories for Clooney and Wright’s characters, family crises that come off as sketchy appendages whose real meat likely ended up on the cutting-room floor.

“Syriana” also shortchanges the story of two Arab friends (Mazhar Munir and Sonell Dadral) disillusioned over Western corporate heartlessness.

Certainly, Gaghan had big choices to make about what to cut and what to leave in. But if Peter Jackson can let “King Kong” run to three hours, isn’t there room to let a movie as smart as “Syriana” run to 2 1/2, thereby gaining in dimension and potency?

Not many movies stand to gain from a longer running time, but “Syriana” is one of them.


© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© 2005 MSNBC.com

Spy Game
Traffic writer's slick oil thriller oozes with intrigue but crams too much into its drum

by J. Hoberman
November 22nd, 2005 12:24 PM

Syriana, written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, is by far the Bushiest of Bush II thrillers. Set in the really big time, it's a complicated tale of investigation and intrigue involving Texas oilmen and Gulf emirs, Islamic terrorists and slick lawyers, the CIA and the Committee for the Liberation of Iran, fear of China and hatred of regulation, dubious business deals and missing missiles—just about everything except the big enchilada, Eye-Rack.

Gaghan wrote the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh's highly regarded 2000 dope opera Traffic, and Syriana (which was inspired by Robert Baer's CIA memoir and takes its title from a think-tank term for a reconfigured Middle East) is a comparable game of 3-D Monopoly. Indeed, Gaghan has been widely quoted comparing oil to crack. Given the large cast, the international hopscotch, and the tantalizing illusion of depth, the movie's tone is Frontline meets John le Carré. Compared to the complacence of something like The Interpreter, it's a regular brain tickler. Gaghan's opus runs just over two hours and, complicated as it is in its evocation of new world disorder, could easily have been half an hour longer.

The ensemble is stellar. Bearded and paunchy, George Clooney plays against his looks as a bearish CIA operative who is at once the spook that sits by the door and the spy left out in the cold; Matt Damon is an enthusiastic young energy trader who angrily cashes in on a family tragedy to hook up with a reform-minded Persian Gulf prince (Alexander Siddig); Jeffrey Wright's very buttoned-down D.C. lawyer dutifully greases the wheels for a merger involving a giant oil company, just shut out of the Gulf, and the smaller outfit run by Chris Cooper's wildcat Texan, which has locked up the drilling rights to Kazakhstan.

No single scene typifies the movie's geopolitical whirligig, and yet nearly every one of them is predicated on a subtle reversal of expectations. While, from a liberal perspective, Siddig's character is a designated good guy and Wright's boss (Christopher Plummer) is an unambiguous slimeball, no one else's morality is so clear-cut. What's particularly novel about Syriana's scenario is its reticence in identifying the honest intentions of its three stars. In a sense, this virtue is also the movie's flaw: There are too many points of view and there is too little time to fully develop the key characterizations.

Or, perhaps the actors have been under-directed. Is Clooney playing a fall guy or a rogue operative or both? At what point does disillusionment set in? (Clooney's torture scene evidently caused a serious back injury.) Is Damon's character an avid opportunist or an incipient idealist? Does Wright's have his own agenda? Is he a monster of passive-aggression or is he simply a tailored suit? Even if character is defined by action, as is customary in the thriller world, there is a sense of abruptly telescoped activity. Clooney's agent, in particular, has a puzzling genius for hitting the narrative's dramatic marks all over the world.

Syriana is both topical and anachronistic. It harks back to lefty thrillers of the Watergate era like The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor, but Gaghan is less fixated on superstar heroism and more interested in representing a system—if, indeed, that system can be represented. His method is actually more Socratic than his worldview is paranoid. There is the feeling that any location might yield a terrorist bomb and that the big story is (intentionally?) submerged beneath a welter of small plots. Still, the question is always, can we really do this—and does it matter?

Gaghan's oblique framing, dense editing, and hectic Steadicam make his movie's tangled narrative skein even harder to unravel. The look recalls Soderbergh—and while Syriana is certainly more fluid than if it had been directed by Michael Mann, it doesn't dumb itself down. Gaghan assumes that you'll get the historical reference when someone casually drops the name "Mossadegh," or recognize the more egregiously self-serving koans certain characters are apt to spout. ("In this town you're innocent until you're investigated," Plummer tells Wright.)

Even at its most didactic, Syriana (like Traffic) is not unduly moralizing. The movie may be too knowing for its own good, but it's not glib and it never goes cheesy.

Let's make a (shady) deal

BY GENE SEYMOUR
STAFF WRITER

November 23, 2005

Watching "Syriana," one feels as if he's receiving cryptic transmissions from some corner of the world where life-altering, earth-rattling decisions are made every minute. The story it tells is so dense with portent and allusiveness that it often seems opaque. And yet, somehow, the movie convinces you, through its strengths of characterization and atmosphere, that it's showing a little of how the world really works - and that the world's dark machinations are every bit as sordid and pitiless as your worst suspicions.

"Syriana," in other words, is like few big-screen thrillers outside of those spawned by John le Carre or Graham Greene novels. It looks and acts as if it needs to be stretched and segmented into a TV miniseries. Yet "Syriana's" very presence among routine multiplex fodder raises the bar for every thriller that will come in its wake.

At the center of its story is an oil-producing Arab nation whose fate is being decided on several fronts, within and without its borders. The country's idealistic, sophisticated Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) has just granted gas drilling rights to China, which bid higher than the U.S.-based Connex oil corporation. This comes while Connex is trying to merge with the smaller, feistier Texas oil company Killen, whose chairman (Chris Cooper) knows that the Justice Department is watching the merger carefully.

So is Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer), a Washington lawyer with deep pockets and long tentacles. He knows Killen's got some shady stuff in its portfolio and wants one of his associates, Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), to finesse the Feds and broker the merger as cleanly as possible. Whiting himself is working behind the scenes to allow Nasir's younger, more malleable brother (Akbar Kurtha) to assume greater influence in his country's business and political affairs.

Meanwhile, hotshot energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) is cultivated by Nasir as a confidant and adviser. Nasir is also attracting a different kind of scrutiny from the CIA, which is ordering one of its veteran operatives, Bob Barnes (George Clooney), to arrange the prince's assassination. Apparently, the agency thinks Nasir is a "bad guy" with links to terrorism. Meanwhile, some of Connex's Arab workers who've been laid off after the Chinese takeover in Nasir's country come in contact with a fundamentalist sect that just happens to have a Stinger missile in its arsenal.

Knowing all this before seeing "Syriana" still won't prepare you for having to peel layer after layer of insidious complication and misdirection. If you're looking for a reliable surrogate, the closest is Clooney's dogged yet somewhat hapless Bob, who finds his dedication to job and country being played like a viola by forces even he can't quite fathom. Don't be surprised if you're still sorting through the complications long after the closing credits.

Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.

Syriana
Reviewed by: Edward Douglas
Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Movie Details: View here


Cast:
George Clooney as Robert Barnes
Matt Damon as Bryan Woodman
Jeffrey Wright as Bennett Holiday
Alexander Siddig as Prince Nasir
Amanda Peet as Julie Woodman
Chris Cooper as Jimmy Pope
Max Minghella as Robby Baer
Christopher Plummer as Dean Whiting
Tim Blake Nelson as Danny Dalton
Jamey Sheridan as Terry George
Tom McCarthy as Fred Franks
William Hurt as Stan Goff
Viola Davis as Marilyn Richards
William Charles Mitchell as Bennett Holiday, Sr.
Mazhar Munir as Wasim Ahmed Khan
Shahid Ahmed as Saleem Ahmed Khan
Sonnell Dadral as Farooq

Summary:
As important now as "Days of the Condor" or "The Manchurian Candidate" were in their time, "Syriana" does for the oil industry what "Traffic" did for the drug trade.

Story:
The workings of an intricate international oil deal involving billions of dollars and thousands of players is seen through the eyes of a few individuals, including rogue CIA operative Robert Barnes (George Clooney), an energy analyst who recently lost a son (Matt Damon), a lawyer involved in the merger of two huge oil companies (Jeffrey Wright), and a young immigrant oil worker (Mazhar Munir) who lost his job due to the merger.

Analysis:
After writing Steven Soderbergh's award-winning "Traffic," Stephen Gaghan would probably like everyone to forget about his directorial debut, the Katie Holmes thriller "Abandon." "Syriana" might be just what the doctor ordered, since it returns Gaghan to the intelligent, socially conscious writing that got him that Oscar five years ago.

On the other hand, it may be too intelligent for its own good, because only those who keep up with world economics, the oil industry and the situation in the Mideast might be able to keep up with the film's set-up that introduces dozens of players in what is essentially four separate related stories. (You know you're in trouble when the production notes include a scorecard listing all of the actors, the characters they play and their relationships; I feel sorry for anyone who has to figure all of this out without that extra help.)

Most of the story involves the oil drilling rights in a country neighboring Iran called Kazakhstan. In D.C., two enormous oil companies are about to merge to share those rights, and lawyer Bennett Holiday (Wright) has to insure things go smoothly despite encountering corruption involving an organization called the Committee to Liberate Iran that seems to be at cross purposes to what he's been hired to do. The American government has assigned the CIA to take care of some potential "problems" in the deal, which they turn over to their weathered field agent Bob Barnes (Clooney) who has a reputation for getting his hands dirty. In Geneva, Bryan Woodman, an idealistic energy analyst who is married with two children, has become the economic advisor to Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig), the son of the emir of Kazakhstan, both unaware of the skullduggery going on back in Washington. At the bottom of the oil industry totem pole is Mazhar Munir and his father, immigrant oil workers from Pakistan who have lost their jobs due to the merger, so Munir suddenly finds himself finding faith among a group of Muslim fundamentalists.

Unless you already know a lot about the government's dealings in the Mideast in terms of oil and leadership of countries, you might stare blankly at the screen as a lot of politicians and corporate heads babble to each other in code, but if you pay close attention, things will be that much more interesting when the stories start to collide. Of course, with all the talk of the Bush family and their relationships in Saudi Arabia, Haliburton and all the other catch phrases mentioned on CNN, it's hard not to pay attention, because it really seems like you're watching real life events unfold. It makes for an interesting counterpoint to "Jarhead," showing a lot of the behind-the-scenes of a major oil deal, which we rarely get a chance to see.

Obviously, the most interesting story is that of Bob Barnes, a character loosely based on real-life CIA agent Robert Baer, whose novel inspired Gaghan's film. Although his storyline is like something right out of the "Bourne" movies, it's far more grounded in real life, as George Clooney plays down his looks with a rough and unkempt appearance more becoming a field agent. As much as Barnes is an enormous asset for the CIA, the organization tries to keep him at an arm's distance so his actions don't come back to haunt them. In one scene, he is tortured so violently that it makes the Van Gogh scene in "Reservoir Dogs" seem tame by comparison; it's excruciating to watch, but quite effective.

The next most interesting story is that of the young Pakistanis who end up getting involved in the terrorist activities of a Muslim faction, a storyline that follows a similar path as "Paradise Now," though a lot subtler in its approach.

Besides Clooney and Damon, who are always great, there are a lot of strong actors, particularly Geoffrey Wright, who once again changes everything about himself to play Bennett, and there are also some nice smaller roles for William Hurt, Chris Cooper, Christopher Plummer and even Tim Blake Nelson in a non-comedic role. The lesser known Arab actors bring a sense of realism to their storyline, but the true standout performance belongs to Alexander Siddig, last seen in Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven", who brings his strength as an actor to the role of Prince Nasir, a man with many strong ideas to save his country, most of them that involve turning their back on the United States.

As confused as you may be by the abundance of characters and concurrent storylines, they do start coming together and things start to make sense as it builds to an amazing final act that's just one climax after another. Once you've figured out what is going on, you're likely to be kept on the edge of your seat, much like you might while watching a Jack Ryan or Jason Bourne film. The thing is that Gaghan has done such a good job setting this story in a setting as close to reality as possible, that it makes all of it that much scarier.

The Bottom Line:
Stephen Gaghan has written another complex, intelligent thriller so relevant to what's going on in the world today that it's hard not to sit up and pay attention despite how long it might take the non-Mensa members to figure out what's happening.

Syriana opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and nationwide on December 9.

'Syriana' explodes on the screen
By Claudia Puig, USA TODAY
Syriana (* * * ½ out of four) is a gripping and fascinating tale of political intrigue that spans three continents, its focus trained on the volatile Middle East. It's a global portrait of danger, deception and disillusionment, with no dearth of human casualties.

See no evil: George Clooney plays a CIA operative in the Middle East who, betrayed by the agency, realizes he has been a dupe.
Warner Bros. Pictures

The storytelling style is multilayered and challenging with several plot threads interwoven, all dealing with the politics of oil. The movie zigs and zags and requires close attention to catch every twist and turn.

A heavier-than-usual, hirsute George Clooney is a CIA agent whose assignments in Lebanon and Iran are not what they seem. His world-weary but heroic agency veteran is the emotional center of the film. Clooney does a masterful job portraying a smart guy who knows he should probably take a desk job in D.C., but is hooked on the adrenaline rush of top-secret overseas assignments. Matt Damon artfully plays an ambitious energy analyst based in Geneva who becomes the confidant of an oil-rich Arab prince. The principled, reform-minded Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) has given natural-gas drilling rights to a Chinese corporation, striking a serious blow to Connex, a huge Texas energy company.

Jeffrey Wright plays a corporate lawyer with some conscience working for a powerful law firm that lacks it. "We're looking for the illusion of due diligence," his superiors tell him, referring to his assignment guiding a merger between giant Connex and Killen, a smaller American oil company. Chris Cooper plays a good ol' boy turned CEO of Killen Corp. He's a self-made Texas oil billionaire who keeps exotic animals on his ranch for hunting.

Worlds away from the wheeling, dealing and corruption, the life of a young Pakistani migrant worker (an excellent Mazhar Munir) unfolds as he loses his job in an oil field and is recruited by a Muslim extremist in a fatalistic but poignant story line.

Writer/director Stephen Gaghan, who won a screenplay Oscar for his equally probing drug-trade saga, Traffic, has fashioned an uncommonly intelligent story, inspired by CIA agent Robert Baer's memoir, See No Evil.

Gaghan assumes his audience is smart enough to follow his explosive tour of global petro-politics. The result is thought-provoking and unnerving, emotionally engaging and intellectually stimulating. Gaghan shakes us up and prompts us to question world policies — without preaching or dumbing down intricate economic and political realities. We need more movies like this. (R for violence and language. Running time: 2 hours, 7 minutes. Opens Wednesday in select cities.)

'Syriana'
Stephen Gaghan's breathless oil-intrigue saga "Syriana" tackles real-world issues under its guise as Hollywood genre entertainment. READER REVIEWS
By Kenneth Turan
Times Staff Writer

November 23, 2005

"Syriana" is a film of paradoxes, contradictions and complications. It's a political thriller that thrives on misdirection, on hiding information just as it hides glamorous George Clooney behind a rumpled exterior and a full beard. Even its title is a puzzler: The meaning is critical, but no one on screen so much as says the word let alone explains it.

Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, "Syriana" is a fearless and ambitious piece of work, made with equal parts passion and calculation, an unapologetically entertaining major studio release with compelling real-world relevance, a film that takes numerous risks and thrives on them all. An Oscar winner for writing "Traffic," Gaghan is not shy about using traditional Hollywood ingredients such as dramatically supercharged plot elements and a major-player cast (including Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper and Amanda Peet), but what he does with them is the opposite of standard.

Gaghan fiddles with the norms of studio storytelling in ways both nervy and unnerving, including treating all his stars like supporting players, the better to grapple with one of today's biggest stories, the ramifications of the fight to control the planet's dwindling supply of oil.

More than that, Gaghan uses the cover of genre picture-making to present a scathing critique of how America acts to protect its interests, how we try to get the world to dance to our tune, and what the consequences of those actions can be. This is a film to make your head spin and, more critically, your mind ponder.

This is also a film, frankly, that can be as confusing as it is involving, that intentionally tells its story in a way that is all but impossible to follow in detail. That's due to both the complexity of the tale "Syriana" has chosen and Gaghan's subversive determination to use mystification in the service of what he sees as a greater good. Pursing his widely quoted notion that oil was the world's crack addiction, Gaghan made a connection with former top CIA field officer Robert Baer, whose book "See No Evil" gets a "suggested by" credit. Gaghan hung out with Baer for a considerable period of time, meeting major players in the interconnected worlds of espionage and politics, international finance and law, oil and radical Islam.

(As to the film's title, Gaghan says that while "Syriana" is "a very real term used by Washington think tanks to describe a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle East," its use here is more generic, pointing to "the fallacious dream that you can successfully remake nation-states in your own image.")

Out of all of this came "Syriana's" complicated plot, which revolves around a fictional but oil-rich emirate in the Persian Gulf, which begins the narrative by announcing it has transferred drilling rights from Connex, a giant Texas firm, to the higher-bidding People's Republic of China. This change profoundly affects four people, individuals who are not initially aware of one another but are all involved in the geopolitical world of Middle Eastern oil and gas.

As Connex tries to recover from its loss, it decides to merge with a smaller firm called Killen. Owned by Jimmy Pope (Chris Cooper), Killen has acquired the drilling rights to a rich field in Kazakhstan. One of "Syriana's" key players is Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), a smooth, controlled Washington lawyer charged by his power-broker boss, Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer), to do whatever it takes to ensure that the Department of Justice approves the merger.

Two of "Syriana's" other major figures are also in the oil business, albeit at opposite ends of the spectrum. Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) is an energy analyst who lives with his wife, Julie (Amanda Peet) and their two sons in posh Geneva. Wasim Kahn (Mazhar Munir) is an impoverished Pakistani oil field worker employed by Connex in that mythical emirate who loses his job when the firm loses those drilling rights to the Chinese. "Syriana's" last major player is veteran CIA field operative Bob Barnes (Clooney), a been-around intelligence agent who speaks Arabic and Farsi and has never hesitated to get his hands dirty in unsavory covert operations. Now nearing the end of his career, Barnes gets drawn into what is happening in the emirate in a way that eventually affects not only his life but also the lives of all the film's major players.

What makes "Syriana" unusual, however, is not so much its plot complexities, which that summary barely hints at, but the way Gaghan and his team have taken daring pains to keep us in the dark by a strategy of obfuscation and willful withholding of information. For "Syriana" is a film that chooses consistently to place the audience one step behind the action, to in effect eliminate the kind of information-providing exposition that we can ordinarily count on. Aided by impressive editing by Tim Squyres ("Gosford Park," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"), we are dropped into the middle of situations, entering rooms after the events have begun, hearing conversations that have started. More important, most of the film's characters are introduced cold, without any identifying information, any hint as to who is important, who is peripheral. It's up to us to use our wits to figure out what's what, and, by "Syriana's" end, the film has shown enough to enable us to do that.

The reason "Syriana" places complete understanding barely beyond our grasp is twofold. First of all, just as placing a mechanical rabbit a fraction out of the reach of greyhounds focuses the animals' attention, this technique ensures that human audiences concentrate intensely on the information at hand. Gaghan, a natural storyteller, helps this process along by building in unashamedly emotional moments, often situations between fathers and sons, that provide dramatic handholds on an otherwise slick surface.

The other reason "Syriana" is structured the way it is is as an aid to verisimilitude. To be heedlessly thrown into things heightens the film's sense of reality, giving us the feeling that we are on the inside, deliciously eavesdropping on behind-closed-doors situations.

"Syriana" encourages that insider feeling in other ways, including having sizable chunks of dialogue in subtitled Arabic (which Clooney had to learn). Elegantly photographed with hand-held cameras by the veteran Robert Elswit (who most recently did Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck"), the production shot in several locations (including Washington, D.C., Texas, Geneva, Dubai and Morocco, which doubled for Tehran, Beirut and the emirate) to give the film a strong visual sense of place.

This overarching focus on enhancing reality is in the service of making us believe that what we're seeing on screen in "Syriana" just might be happening at this very moment, that a shadowy, amoral cabal of untouchable Washington power brokers might be pulling the strings that control the world.

This is conspiracy-theory filmmaking of the most bravura kind, but if only a fraction of its suppositions are true, we — and the world — are in a world of trouble.

The sludge report

Oil-fueled thriller 'Syriana' is complex, ambitious & insoluble


SYRIANA
With George Clooney, Matt Damon.
Director: Stephen Gaghan (2:06).
R: Violence and language. At Lincoln Square, Angelika.

It would be nice to report that Stephen Gaghan's "Syriana" is a clearheaded account of the modern military- oil industry complex that will answer all your questions about U.S. foreign policy and our various intrigues in the Middle East.

It would also be nice if I could explain E=mc².

Both the plot of "Syriana" and Einstein's famous ­theory are equally inscrutable on first — or third — viewing. The presence of George Clooney, Matt Damon and other fine ­actors helps you ignore your sense of descending ignorance as the movie unfolds. And the ending, when you think about it for a few days, does add up.

In fact, the movie adds up to one of the smartest and most ambitious political thrillers in years. But if you find a more difficult movie to follow this year, it will be in Mandarin without subtitles.

Suggested by the memoirs of disillusioned CIA agent Robert Baer, "Syriana" attempts to peel the layers off the complex and often corrupt relationships among American oil companies, intelligence agencies, the government and the ruling class of the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

Interweaving four separate story strands, "Syriana" hopscotches the globe, pausing most often in a fictional Arab state whose leader is about to turn over the reins of power to one of two very different sons. That decision — to give the country to the "good" prince or the "bad" prince — can affect the entire balance of the region, not to mention a merger being brokered between two oil companies back in Texas.

In the middle of all this, though they don't exactly understand their roles, are Bryan Woodman (Damon), an energy analyst who travels back and forth from his home in Geneva to deal with the Arabs, and ­Robert Barnes (Clooney), a veteran CIA operative and occasional assassin who is given one last dirty mission — to kill the good prince, Nasir (Alexander Siddig) — before he can claim that desk job in Washington.

There is also a subplot about a ­Pakistani oil worker whose frustrations with the oil companies make him a candidate for a ­suicide-bombing mission.

Gaghan, who won an Oscar for his multilayered script for Steven Soderbergh's 2000 "Traffic," directs "Syriana" with a sense of urgency in every scene. You know from the opening moments — when Clooney's mission to blow up a pair of drug runners allows a mysterious blue-eyed Egyptian to get away with a Stinger missile — that big events are ahead.

Clooney, for reasons you'd have to ask Charlize Theron, gained 35 pounds for his role, and shows off his new gut in a scene where Barnes lies in his own blood after being tortured. (If Dick Cheney sees the movie, I wonder if he will agree that ripping out the fingernails of a detainee warrants a CIA exemption.)

All these overlapping stories are arranged to provide a foundation for the last act. But there are so many characters in so many situations that it's not exactly like watching a foundation being built. It's more like looking at the blueprint.

Syriana, by the way, is a Washington think-tank word that refers to the notion that the U.S. can remake nation states in our own image. How's that working out?

Syriana
Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum


OILY WARNING A tangled fossil-fuel thriller puts the politics front and center

Syriana has a lot of big, important things to say about big, important things, and it says them with a sense of urgency. This dense, talky, proudly complicated adult drama of geopolitical intrigue weighs in on the amoral realities of covert CIA operations, Middle Eastern politics, global oil business, and U.S. government antitrust investigations — the whole military-industrial ball of wax. Indeed, the point of Syriana appears to be that the whole lousy, corrupt, oil-producing and -consuming world is a ball of wax, ready to melt.

The movie tells interrelated stories in knotted loops of simultaneity and jagged shards of documentary-style realism, with conspiracy on its mind and the piecemeal structure of Traffic as its screenwriting template, in good part because Stephen Gaghan, who wrote the Oscar-winning Traffic script for Steven Soderbergh, here writes and directs, too. It's as earnestly, politically left-leaning as Jarhead is coyly apolitical; it's also the kind of movie that requires a viewer to work actively for comprehension, and to chalk up any lack of same to his or her own deficiency in the face of something so evidently smart.

But while I'm all for political dramas that take stands rather than feign neutrality, what Syriana forgets to provide is the one thing that makes any movie, however difficult, easy to love: emotional empathy. Like the title itself — think-tank talk for a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle East — this is a working paper of ideas driven by hypothesis, rather than a compelling drama driven by compassion.

And while those with an eye for vast left-wing conspiracies are welcome to believe that Gaghan planned all along to make a movie shaped like a big-picture that fails to take into account small-picture human needs, I am not one of those conspiracy junkies; I think the absence of soul is just the filmmaker's big gaffe.

Consider George Clooney as Bob Barnes, a veteran CIA man who serves as one of the character tentpoles of Gaghan's construction. Bob's got the thickened gut of a middle-aged company spook slowed down by years of routine (even if the routine involves assassination), and Clooney, who grew his own morose gut and beard for the part, is nothing if not generous in his habitation of such a shady yet loyal, freewheeling yet lonely man. (The actor's commitment to politically engaged movies, in this as well as Good Night, and Good Luck, is one of the most effective uses of his well-earned stardom.)

But for all we see of Bob, we know nothing at all about the guy, except that having been arbitrarily double-crossed by a field contact during the course of a mission, he now finds himself just as arbitrarily made a scapegoat by his own CIA handlers, who want to distance themselves from such a liability. We watch Matt Damon, as an open-faced go-getter of an energy analyst, negotiate business with a Middle Eastern prince (Alexander Siddig), and Jeffrey Wright, as a Washington attorney, work on a merger between two American oil companies, and there's no reason given for the double-dealing, power plays, and American capitalist thuggery that shape the landscape. (What little humanity this trio of clueless, overmatched American men retains is conferred by fleeting interaction with kin; in the case of Wright's ambitious lawyer, his private burden is an embarrassing drinking bum of a father. And he handles the old man with much the same distraction shown by Michael Douglas as a drug czar with an addicted daughter in Traffic.)

The same schematic shorthand goes, by the way, for the Middle Easterners involved, who are less fallible men tripped up by the modern (and specifically American) world than walking position statements: corrupt Gulf-country prince backed by American oilmen versus his reform-minded brother, or long-suffering migrant Pakistani oil worker versus his angry son recruited by nuclear-weapon-toting extremists.

Syriana makes a point of circling the globe, with scenes shot in Geneva, Dubai, London, etc. — it's a picture that displays datelines as a show of geopolitical bustle. And the speeches of even the most passing players are honed to draw blood — Chris Cooper as a scheming oilman, Christopher Plummer as the head of a powerful law firm, Amanda Peet in a slicing performance as Damon's distressed wife. But what do those speeches say? They say, We're talking about big, important things, so pay attention — and then make it a challenge to do so.

AND JUSTICE FOR OIL
By LOU LUMENICK

SYRIANA Fiercely intelligent. Running time: 128 minutes. Rated R (violence, profanity, sexuality). At the Lincoln Square and the Angelika.


'SYRIANA" may star George Clooney and Matt Damon, but audiences should definitely not go expecting "Ocean's 13."

Stephen Gaghan's hugely ambitious, excellently acted and very challenging thriller is anything but a mindless romp, asking tough questions about the consequences of America's addiction to cheap oil in the same way that "Traffic" — which Gaghan wrote — put drug policy under a microscope.

Clooney plays a CIA agent in the Middle East, Matt Damon is an oil analyst and Jeffrey Wright is a lawyer involved in an oil-company merger. They are all caught up in shifting loyalties and values in three separate, globe-spanning main plots that do not converge until the end.

Audiences will have to pay very close attention (and possibly invest in a second viewing) for a story that's packed with enough details to fill a six-hour miniseries to fully pay off. This film is where people who complain Hollywood dumbs everything down have a chance to put up or shut up.

Clooney, who gained 35 pounds for the role, gives a self-effacing but highly effective performance as Bob Barnes, a burnt-out career spook.

Barnes comes to question his life's work when he is hung out to dry by the agency after a botched attempt to assassinate Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig), in line to take over the throne of an unidentified Middle Eastern kingdom — after being tortured, a tough scene to watch.

The progressive Nasir wants to transfer his country's oil rights to the Chinese from an American oil company called Connex. The company responds by cooking up a merger with Kileen, a much smaller Texas firm headed by Jimmy Pope (Chris Cooper) that has improbably landed lucrative drilling rights in Kazakhstan.

The merger attracts the attention of the Justice Department, and high-powered lawyer Bennett Holiday (Wright) is assigned the politically sensitive task of performing "due dilligence." This requires crafting an admission that Kileen's acquisition of the rights might not have been totally above board — but was not corrupt enough to scuttle the deal, considered to be in the national interest.

As lobbyist Danny Dalton (Tim Blake Nelson) put it to Holiday, "Corruption keeps us safe and warm."

It gets worse. When analyst Bryan Woodman (Damon) is at Prince Nasr's vacation house in Spain, his son is accidentally killed in the swimming pool. Woodman's wife (Amanda Peet) is horrified when her husband exploits the tragedy as a business opportunity.

This is a cynical worldview, but one that Gaghan supports in his meticulously researched script, very loosely based on a book by longtime CIA operative Bob Baer, the inspiration for Clooney's character.

Though the film's left-leaning agenda is quite clear, it isn't preaching to the choir — rather refreshingly, Gaghan doesn't pretend to have the answers for the very complicated questions he is raising.

There are also several trenchant subplots: As Wright's Machiavellian boss (Chistopher Plummer) plans to depose Nasir in favor of a brother more disposed to Connex, a pair of newly laid-off Connex workers (Mazhar Munir and Sonnel Dadral) are recruited as terrorists.

Others involving Barnes's college-bound son (Max Minghella) and Wright's morally-offended father (William C. Mitchell) get short shrift in an attempt to compress a sprawling story into just over two hours — it really requires three.

Still, "Syriana" is one of the year's best movies.

Syriana
Release Date: November 23, 2005
Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet, Christopher McDonald, Chris Cooper, Greta Scacchi, Michelle Monaghan, Jeffrey Wright, Gina Gershon
Directed by: Stephen Gaghan

PREMIERE.COM'S REVIEW (posted 11/23/05)

Can a two-hour fictional narrative film correct several decades’ worth of misinformation and propaganda about this country’s relation to the Middle East and its most precious asset? Writer-director Steven Gaghan thinks it’s worth a shot, and with Syriana (“suggested by” See No Evil, a War-on-Terror-from-the-inside-out book by former CIA field officer Robert Baer), he crafts a multi-story-line thriller not dissimilar to his script for Traffic. Jeffrey Wright plays a high-powered lawyer whose background of family dysfunction has imbued him with enough ambition that he can leap multiple ethical hurdles in a single bound; bearded and burly George Clooney, a CIA op whose loyalties take a shift once he gloms that he’s been hung out to dry; Matt Damon, an economic analyst who picks a plum gig out of a personal tragedy, earning a place by the side of a future emir; and Mazhar Munir, a sort of Middle East migrant worker whose ultimate disenfranchisement leads him to the bosom of—you’ll never guess—a group of Islamic radicals. The stories are all densely packed with detail and convincingly told. Perhaps too convincingly told. At a time when “My Country, Right or Wrong” has for many morphed into “My country, right by definition,” and people trot out God-is-on-our-side justifications for all manner of slaughter, it’s pretty ballsy of these moviemakers to posit the confluence of Big Oil and Big Government in this country as some kind of, um, Great Satan. And it is the fact that Syriana takes things as far as it does, and no farther, that makes it an uncomfortable film to think about. I won’t even get into the fact that for this movie’s purposes Israel might as well be located in Dutchess County. Let’s say for the sake of argument that we take everything the movie is saying at face value. How might we viewers, who have been enlightened by Syriana, go about putting an end to the corruption and exploitation that the movie so deplores? Syriana depicts a system so thoroughly and intractably rotten that the standard liberal how-you-can-make-a-difference solutions—being more conscientious about using electricity, getting a hybrid car, and so on—only look like so much spit in the face of an atomic fireball. If this way of doing business in the Middle East has got to go, who’s going to get rid of it? Do we elect better leaders? Sure, that works every time. Start a revolution? Um, hey, wait a minute . . .

The system that this movie so deplores, after all, fuels—among other things—the movie industry and its various satellites (of which this magazine is one). How much do Syriana’s filmmakers want us to give up? How much are they willing to give up? Or is this movie just another “we wanted to get the debate going” bromide?

These misgivings might not have stuck so hard in my craw had Syriana bothered to address precisely how implicated its own creation is in the situation it purports to blow the lid off. But there’s the rub—conventional narrative filmmaking isn’t very good at that sort of thing. That’s why director Jean-Luc Godard, to whom the issue of implication is vital, has been hammering away at that form over the past several decades. I wouldn’t expect Gaghan and company to emulate Godard—have you seen the guy’s box office numbers lately?—but I still feel they’re ducking the issue. I would hate to think that these moviemakers understand exactly what they’re saying, and are counting on the fact that it won’t make a fig’s worth of difference. Or am I placing an unfair burden on the movie? If I am, that might count as some sort of testament to Syriana’s effectiveness.—Glenn Kenny

Clooney's Mideast thriller sizzles

By BRUCE KIRKLAND - Toronto Sun

PLOT: Before it comes together at the tragic climax, you must pay close attention to a complexity of parallel plots involving personal trauma, oil industry corruption, Washington intrigue, spy action and Middle East terrorism.

A gripping thriller, a labyrinth of parallel plots, a moral message movie and a brutally realistic action picture -- Stephen Gaghan's drama Syriana is all that and more.

Although it is one of the best films of 2005, it will be a miracle if it becomes a mainstream success because this kind of movie is not supposed to be comfort food for the masses.

The film is so complex that a bathroom break or a two-minute nap could throw you so off track that you won't know what the hell is going on.

And, in the morally murky world of oil, Congress, the C.I.A., Hezbollah, Arab sheikdoms and the madrassa schools that "educate" Middle East suicide bombers, there is no protagonist to love, respect and root for.

In fact, the most sympathetic characters are two Pakistani Muslims who lose their jobs in the oilfields because of geo-political machinations. Vulnerable, confused and desperate, they are sucked into the fantaticism of a cell of terrorists who train suicide bombers. We see just how easy that process is when the targeted people are disadvantaged.

The next most charismatic figure is an Arab prince (Alexander Siddig from Kingdom Of Heaven) who is considered an enemy of the U.S. because he is a liberal reformer who won't sell out his unnamed country to Big Oil.

As for the many movie stars in the stellar ensemble, George Clooney is fattened up by 30 pounds to play a C.I.A. agent -- hardly a sexy role. Matt Damon looks normal but plays a U.S. financial consultant who uses the accidental death of his own son to leverage a lucrative inside job with the prince. Amanda Peet plays his disgusted wife.

Other key players include Chris Cooper, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson and Christopher Plummer, the latter in a beautifully orchestrated performance as a Washington lawyer specializing in the Middle East. His savagery is awe-inspiring -- and distressing because it is so real.

Particular credit also goes to Jeffrey Wright (Angels In America) for his astringent work as an ambitious and manipulative lawyer in Plummer's firm.

It is pointless to try to explain how all these pieces interlock in Gaghan's sensational screenplay, which was loosely inspired by See No Evil, the controversial book by former C.I.A. field agent Robert Baer (who is played, in a fictional way, by Clooney). Syriana is even more ambitious and complicated than Gaghan's Oscar-winning script for Traffic, which Steven Soderbergh directed (he is the co-executive producer here with Clooney).

The complexity of the material demands attention. Take mental notes. Even at the end, moral ambiguity is not explained away. There are no heroic, save-the-day Superman stunts to let us feel good about the world.

Instead, we grapple with "the truth" of a dirty, conflicted, warring world in which the powerful exploit the weak. Syriana does not answer your concerns, it asks pointed questions. That is what great art should do.

But that also means this is caustic drama, not easy escapism. It is the counterpoint to Soderbergh/Clooney fluff like Ocean's Eleven and watching Syriana will add stress, not relieve it. I think that is exciting. Still, enter at your own risk.

BOTTOM LINE: Stephen Gaghan's brilliant political thriller is a hugely challenging film for audiences willing to invest in a film with a social conscience. A large ensemble cast led by George Clooney is uniformly terrific.

"Syriana"
A beefy George Clooney is marvelous as a CIA agent caught up in a Middle Eastern oil intrigue, but this political thriller is too complicated for its own good.
By Stephanie Zacharek

Nov. 23, 2005 | If you've seen the trailer for "Syriana" -- and have even half a memory of the way one character declares, "Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why we win" -- then you already know pretty much everything about the movie's intentions and its ultimate message. This is a political thriller with a laundry list of viable points to hit: The United States will stop at nothing to protect its oil interests; the CIA is willing and able to carry out vile deeds, sometimes by taking advantage of the loyalty and dedication of its employees; and there are infinite ways for big corporations to manipulate the Justice Department so they can do whatever they please and still appear to be operating within the letter of the law.

The seriousness of "Syriana" is its chief selling point; it's a solemn, ruminative piece of work whose entertainment value -- if that's what you're looking for -- rests solely in the way its writer and director, Stephen Gaghan, keeps its multiple story lines clicking forward at once, sometimes swerving into one another, sometimes just chugging along on parallel tracks. This is a movie made for grown-ups. It doesn't waste time or insult our intelligence with needless explication; it drops its crumbs of information scene by scene, always staying two or three steps ahead of us.

But Gaghan's faith in our ability to read this trail of crumbs accurately is a mixed blessing. "Syriana" often feels more complicated than it needs to be, and there are too many places where its willful complexity undercuts what the actors are doing. There's something a little showy about the way Gaghan -- who wrote the script of Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic," a similarly complicated picture but a far more immediate one -- presents us with so many somber winks and feints as we try to process the motives and machinations of the movie's numerous key characters. It's as if Gaghan knows we're up to the challenge he's handing us and yet secretly hopes we're not -- maybe because the more confused we get, the smarter he looks.

The geographical nexus of "Syriana" is a fictional oil-rich Gulf country, whose aged emir is preparing to step down. The eldest of his two sons, Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig, who, in neat shorthand strokes, deftly defines a character who's both glamorous and principled), is next in line for the throne; he's more interested in social and economic reform for his country than in catering to U.S. business interests, which is why he grants natural-gas drilling rights to a Chinese company instead of renewing the country's long-held contract with Connex, a huge Texas energy conglomerate.

Anxious to maintain its foothold in the Middle East, Connex instigates a merger with a smaller Texas oil company, Killen (its owner is played by Chris Cooper), which has drilling rights in Kazakhstan. Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), a young lawyer with a prestigious Washington law firm, has been assigned to perform due diligence on the companies, learning the wormy nooks and crannies of their international business dealings. Meanwhile, a young energy analyst (Matt Damon) with a small Swiss trading company, approaches the emir on behalf of his firm, hoping to land a consulting contract. When one of Damon's young sons dies in an accident at a party thrown by the emir, Prince Nasir awards him the consulting gig as a way of making amends. The last but possibly most crucial character in this plot, which unfolds like an endless set of nesting dolls, is longtime CIA agent Bob Barnes (George Clooney), a dutiful government foot soldier who's been working for years in the Middle East.

For the most part, it's remarkable that Gaghan sustains the logic of these numerous plot threads as well as he does. (Yet another subplot involves a young Pakistani man, Mazhar Munir, who loses his job in the oil-drilling fields and, bitter and frustrated at his inability to make a living, comes under the sway of an Islamic fundamentalist.) This is a picture with strong political convictions, and Gaghan's dedication to those convictions generates its own persistent whine of electricity. But Gaghan is more interested in building a teetering pile of ideas than a compelling drama. There's so much going on in "Syriana" that the performers often get lost in all the criss-crossing traffic. And, much as "Syriana" pretends not to have black-and-white heroes and villains, it's obvious who the bad guys are: When Chris Cooper, at a meeting of bigwig executives, asks, "What is an emir, anyway?" he pronounces the word, in a slithery Texas drawl, "E-murr," as if he thinks it's some sort of exotic animal. Cooper is a wonderful actor, capable of far more subtlety than that. But he seems to be doing exactly what the movie asks of him, which isn't much.

It's entirely possible that Gaghan just isn't an actor's director. He's certainly more interested in structure than in storytelling, which may serve him well enough for a movie or two, although the novelty may wear thin after that. But if nothing else, "Syriana" gives us a hint of what Clooney has to offer us as he enters that territory so treacherous for actors, middle age. The politics of "Syriana" are clearly pretty much in line with Clooney's. (He's also, along with Soderbergh and several others, one of the movie's executive producers.) But more than anything else in "Syriana," his performance gives us a sense of what those politics mean emotionally: It gives us a concrete sense of how convictions can shape our lives, or possibly even destroy them. Clooney gained weight for the role, the sort of stunt that usually draws praise by itself, at least as proof of an actor's dedication.

Clooney probably could have played this role just as well without the weight gain, but the extra padding does make him more convincing as a character who's nearing retirement age. Clooney has always been a marvelous romantic lead, and a great charmer in pictures like Soderbergh's "Ocean's Eleven." But with "Syriana" -- as well as with his small, sly role in "Good Night, and Good Luck," which he also directed -- Clooney gives us a glimpse of what we're in for as he stretches the boundaries of his potential. In "Syriana," Clooney carries even more weight in his eyes than he does in his body: We see the way both duty and doubt weigh on him; he tells us a story that stretches far beyond the scope of Gaghan's overextended cleverness. With that extra padding, and with his grayed, grizzled beard, Clooney carries himself like a depressed circus bear. With just the barest wrinkling of his brow, he shows us how being too good at the job he does can be a man's ultimate punishment. Clooney is the soul of "Syriana," and his face is what you're left with long after the movie's obsessive plot details have sifted away.

Syriana (2005)
Ambitious to a fault, Stephen Gaghan's geopolitical thriller Syriana is an alternately engrossing and confusing film stretched over far too broad a narrative canvas. It's a movie of many virtues that fairly crackles with intelligence, but this sophisticated and handsomely crafted tale of covert operations and corruption in the oil world never quite coheres into a satisfying whole. For while it's admirable that Gaghan refuses to "dumb down" Syriana so it will play to the lowest common denominator, he never quite gets a handle on his sprawling narrative. Nor do any of the film's principal characters have the emotional complexity that distinguishes the similar (and far superior) Traffic, which Gaghan wrote for Steven Soderbergh. The disappointing result is a crisply acted and occasionally exciting ensemble film undone by murky plotting and thin character development.

Inspired by Robert Baer's 2002 memoir See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA War on Terrorism ,Syriana gradually weaves together four disparate narrative strands against the volatile backdrop of the Middle East. We first meet paunchy, middle-aged CIA veteran Bob Barnes (George Clooney) on assignment in Tehran. Charged with assassinating two Iranian arms dealers, Barnes successfully completes the mission, but there's a complication: one of the dealers' Stinger missiles goes missing. Back at CIA headquarters, Bob's concerns about the errant Stringer missile fall on deaf ears. Instead, he's given another mission: assassinate Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig), the heir apparent to an oil-rich Gulf country. A principled and idealist moderate, Prince Nasir has dissolved long-standing ties with Texas oil giant Connex to do business with the Chinese.

If Prince Nasir succeeds his father, the Emir Hamad Al-Subai (Nadim Sawalha), Connex, and other U.S. companies will suffer. To compensate, Connex is scrambling to acquire the smaller company, Killen, which has drilling rights in Kazakhastan. The companies' looming merger could make Connex-Killen even more of a global powerhouse—if the Justice Department doesn't scuttle the merger. That's why rabidly ambitious D.C. attorney Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) is working 'round the clock to make sure that the merger gets approved.

Meanwhile, Prince Nasir has retained Switzerland-based energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) to advise him on much-needed economic reforms. Woodman's more than eager to hitch his wagon to Prince Nasir, whose deal with the Chinese has eliminated jobs for migrant laborers, like Pakistani Wasim Kahn (Mazhar Munir). Unable to find work, Wasim falls under the dangerous sway of a charismatic terrorist, who has that missing Stinger missile.

Gradually, the lives of these men will become irrevocably intertwined as all the pieces in this narrative puzzle fall into place—in theory, anyway. What actually unfolds onscreen is a frustrating amalgam of stunning set pieces and evocative visuals that's often incredibly difficult to follow. In his apparent desire to write a sweeping and politically relevant geopolitical thriller, Gaghan attempts to forge a path that leads from greedy Texas oilmen through corrupt Washington power brokers to Islamic extremists. If only he'd taken us on a less circuitous route that didn't get bogged down in storytelling minutiae, like the tiresome, one-note subplots involving Holiday's alcoholic father and Woodman's troubled marriage (Amanda Peet plays Damon's wife in a throwaway role), among others. These sketchily developed subplots don't add much emotional texture to Syriana. In fact, the film would be much stronger if Gaghan had stripped these from his unwieldy and overpopulated narrative.

Muddled storytelling aside, there is much that's impressive in Syriana. Gaghan's dialogue is razor sharp, undeniably topical, and often scathingly funny. He also stages some harrowing scenes, such as a nightmarish interrogation of Barnes in Beirut that's not for the squeamish. And the acting is generally superior across the board, with Clooney, Siddig, and Christopher Plummer—as a suavely corrupt lawyer advising the Emir—the cast standouts. Clooney is the revelation; there's no trace of his wry, self-mocking persona in the weary, impolitic Barnes, whose CIA bosses increasingly regard him as a loose cannon in the field.

Given its huge cast of characters, globe-spanning narrative, and complex web of shady dealings and espionage, Syriana might have worked as a miniseries in the tradition of the BBC's acclaimed Traffik. As a two-hour film, however, it barely taps into its potentially rich vein of material.

— TIM KNIGHT

REVIEW: SYRIANA
11.29.05
By Devin Faraci
Syriana is like the coolest social studies class you ever had. It’s fascinating, and it feels completely real and true, but in the end it’s also a touch academic.

Stephen Gaghan won an Academy Award for his script to Traffic, so it’s no surprise that Syriana feels in many ways like Traffic 2: What Else We're Addicted To. It’s a fractured narrative that sprawls across the globe with pieces just sort of touching each other but never fully fitting together. In the end the parts that are left out aren’t story elements – I never found the movie as hard to follow as all the buzz would have you believe, you just have to pay attention – but rather an emotional core. Syriana is the rare long movie that I wish was just a little longer, so we could have more time to flesh out some of the characters.

The film is a triumph in many other ways – Gaghan does the almost impossible and pulls back his camera to illuminate the spider web that connects oil to the government to the politics of the Middle East to terrorism, and he deftly shows how tapping on one strand can cause every fiber to shake. It’s also a beautifully shot film; Gaghan shows that he has grown immeasurably as a filmmaker since his schlocky debut, Abandon.

He’s got a lot of support from an astonishing cast as well. George Clooney shatters every expectation here, reminding us that he’s not just a great movie star but a damn fine actor as well. He’s a burnt-out CIA agent caught up in the political vagaries of the modern age, a veteran of a covert world that has now, more than ever, become disengaged from morality and meaning. The brouhaha is that Clooney gained weight and bearded up for the role, but I don’t think he needed to – he plays most of the character through his hollow eyes.

Working on another tangent, Matt Damon is a bright young ambitious energy analyst who parlays a personal tragedy into an advisory role to a radically progressive prince (Alexander Siddig, demolishing the Star Trek curse and proving that just because a guy once wore a unitard doesn’t mean he can’t bring the acting). The prince wants to expand his nation’s economy, removing its reliance on American oil dollars, and creating a more democratic state. This, it turns out, isn’t to the best interests of the Americans.

In another aspect of the story Jeffrey Wright is marvelous as a lawyer investigating a merger of two major energy companies. There’s plenty of underhanded dealings going on, and Wright has to find them before the feds do – and figure out who to sacrifice to make sure the merger can happen. But even while the feds are investigating the energy company, they’re also doing their bidding in the Middle East.

The final major storyline follows two Pakistani boys working at a refinery in the prince’s unnamed country. They find that the only people who treat them with respect are the imams at the local madrass, who also happen to teach a radical and violent interpretation of the Koran. Before long they are being molded into suicide bombers by a man who bought his weapons from the United States.

Gaghan does a masterful job of weaving these stories together. Again, many people will tell you that the film is hard to follow, but they’re completely wrong. It’s just a movie that demands your attention. Moviegoers aren’t used to that anymore, and it’s refreshing to sit down and spend the film’s two hour running time fully engaged in what’s going on onscreen because Gaghan isn’t interested in holding your hand through it all.

He makes paying attention easy not just because his frame is always fascinating to look at but because his dialogue pops. There’s plenty of jargon getting tossed around, but he trusts his actors to speak it like poetry.

It does sound like poetry, but it’s usually in the service of the academic. Gaghan doesn’t neglect the emotional aspects of his story, it’s just that that stuff comes off as fascinating rather than effecting. George Clooney’s spy must lie to his son; Jeffrey Wright’s old, alkie dad is unhappy with his son working for the Establishment; Matt Damon’s personal life falls apart after his tragedy. All of these plotlines feel like they’re truncated from longer films. Gaghan’s good enough that any of these stories could be a feature film unto itself; unfortunately he leaves us kind of wishing they were.

The story with the most immediate emotional impact is the journey of the suicide bombers. I would say that it’s an unusually sympathetic portrait of what drives young men into the madness of terrorism, but it’s ground that’s been covered recently in great films like Paradise Now and TBS’ underseen miniseries The Grid. Even still, Gaghan handles the story with a kind of sympathy sure to infuriate right wingers intent on seeing the roots of terrorism only in evil.

Syriana is a film that will probably infuriate right wingers in general, which is just silly. The movie has been described as left wing, but to me it’s even more neutral than Sam Mendes’ Jarhead – this is what is happening. This is what is happening in the Middle East and this is what is happening in the corridors of American power and this is what is happening in the boardrooms of multinational energy companies every single day. It’s like Traffic in that way – you can’t attack a film for reflecting reality.

I am tempted to attack the film for pulling its punches, though. The movie posits the problems of oil and terrorism as a cycle, with every element feeding into every other element. Which is true enough. But there are elements that, in the real world, are more responsible than others, and they need to be named. It’s frustrating to watch this film taking place in an alternate universe where Saudi Arabia isn’t named, where George Bush isn’t called out, where Dick Cheney’s potentially illegal collusion with energy companies is ignored. Gaghan fills his movie with enough fact and reality to give it the sheen of reality – I wish it had gone further in that direction. In the post-Watergate world of entertainment we’re used to the bad guys being vague government and big business types.

Syriana is a dense, layered film that is essentially this season’s broccoli – it’s good for you, and when prepared right (as Gaghan has), tasty. In the end Gaghan doesn’t quite capture the emotional wallop that he did with Traffic, but it doesn’t necessarily make Syriana a lesser film. There’s still plenty to chew on here, and even more to enjoy.

8.8 out of 10

Syriana
UK cinema release date: 3 March 2006

We're in a highly prolific period for politically charged movies. There was the arms trade drama Lord of War, the romantic UN thriller The Constant Gardener and there's the upcoming McCarthyism biopic Good Night and Good Luck. One of the most anticipated political hot potatoes is Syriana. Coming from the Oscar winning writer of Traffic and concerning itself with the topical theme of the oil trade between the US and the Middle East, this could very well be one of the most important films of the year.

Similar to Traffic, Syriana follows a number of intertwining stories. First there's Bob (George Clooney), a CIA operative who begins to discover the truth behind what he has been working for. Then there's Bryan (Matt Damon) an energy analyst who suffers a horrific family tragedy and strikes up an unlikely understanding with an idealistic Gulf prince. Then there's Bennett (Jeffrey Wright), a lawyer who is given the unenviable task of dealing with a potentially corrupt merger between two oil companies. Finally there is Wasim (Mazhar Munir), a Pakistani teenager who after unfairly losing his job becomes intrigued by the words of a charming preacher.

Syriana is not an easy film to follow. That's not necessarily a complaint, in fact it's refreshing not to have all of the details explained in a patronising fashion, but as a warning, if you like to leave your brain on standby at the movies it's best to leave this well alone. There is so much packed into the movie that it demands a second viewing. I believe that many of the more personal, human aspects will become all the more powerful on repeat viewings.

The film's directorial fashion is similar to Traffic. Considering that it is directed by its author and produced by its director, Steven Soderbergh, that's not a great surprise. But this comparison leaves Syriana wanting as much of Soderbergh's style is not apparent here. Gaghan does however have a skillful management of each of the various stories and their links are not tenuous as they often are in ensemble films.

The film is highly damning of the suspected links between terrorism, governments and the oil business and although it claims to be set in the past, it's very much tied to the present. It has been dismissed by some as anti-American, a term usually dished out to movies that dare to break the status quo and challenge the conservatism of much of Hollywood. Its searing conclusion will likely fuel this as it paints a depressing image of international relations and political corruption.

The acting is uniformly good but as its being painted as an Oscar contender there are no single performances that scream out. The character who commands the most attention is the idealistic prince, played by Alexander Siddig. His character arc is incredibly powerful and ultimately poignant.

If anyone from the film should be singled out though it should be writer-director Stephen Gaghan for bringing such a challenging and thought-provoking thriller to the screen. On first viewing, all of the film's many intricacies may not have been crystal clear, but when a film is clever enough for you to want to see it all over again then you know you're watching something special.

- Ben Lee

Film Focus: Syriana
November 29th 2005


Director/Screenwriter: Stephen Gaghan
Starring: George Clooney, Christopher Plummer, Matt Damon, Alexander Siddig

US Release date: 9th December 2005
UK Release date: 3rd March 2005


Very few Hollywood films dare to tackle hot button political issues contemporaneously. Usually movie expositions of controversial realities come some time afterwards, when the politics have become less charged. But writer/director Stephen Gaghan, who made a name for himself five years ago with the film 'Traffic', has made a very political film set in today's world.

'Traffic' wowed audiences with its interweaving stories about America's so-called War on Drugs, and the film went on to win numerous Oscars, including one that went to Stephen Gaghan for screenwriting.

Rather than go on to write the next blockbuster, Gaghan decided to capitalize on his newfound status in Hollywood by researching and writing a complex script about the global oil industry, that now comes to us in the form of 'Syriana'.

Gaghan also directed this political thriller, which stars George Clooney as a veteran CIA agent, Matt Damon as a young energy analyst, and Alexander Siddig as a middle-eastern prince.

Like 'Traffic', 'Syriana' has multiple storylines and is quite demanding of its audience. And, like 'Traffic', it tries to illuminate global corruption and the machinations of politics.

Manoush Zomorodi: "I've read that you don't like being labelled a political filmmaker. How would you describe yourself, then?"

Stephen Gaghan: "An average, bumbling guy who got really lucky."

Manoush Zomorodi: "But surely the films that we now know you for definitely take on the establishment?"

Stephen Gaghan: "It's very odd, I don't know why. Maybe I was dropped on my head as a child. I have no idea. I don't set out to do this. It's like I set out to try and tell a human story, fathers and sons, people I relate to, show the world as it is now. Maybe that's it, maybe what I'm interested in is trying to portray the world as it feels to me, the truth of it, and maybe we're living in political times now."

Gaghan is of course referring to the war in Iraq, and 'Syriana' certainly reflects what is currently going on in the Middle East.

In order to write 'Syriana', Gaghan travelled the world talking to American politicians, middle eastern sheiks, oil barons and even the leader of the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah. The idea was to show all the myriad people involved in the oil industry, and the myriad people harmed by it.

Stephen Gaghan: "What I was interested in was the idea of where ideology and self-interest cross. I was lucky, I got to travel all around the world for a couple years and talk to people, and what I'd always hear was a perfect ideological explanation of what they were doing. And then you'd say, 'and look at all of this you're going to gain from it'. 'Oh well, there's that too but that's not really why I'm doing it'. And you just start to wonder. When you're the world's foremost power, at least temporarily, you have to take the temperature of that power; I think it's important.

Let's not forget, we have 150,000 soldiers risking their lives every day. That's going on right now and that's real. I find it hard as a writer not to be engaged by that."

Manoush Zomorodi: "Obviously films are meant to be entertaining as well as informative. Some people, maybe general audiences, might find this film a bit hard-going. Do you think that they'll be frustrated by it?"

Stephen Gaghan: "I hope not. I tried to design a film that mirrored what was happening right now. I think there are lots of types of filmgoing experiences; there are ones that can end during the two hour time period, and there's another type of experience that gets you thinking, that can stay under your skin, it kind of stays with you when you leave the theatre."

Syriana



Complicated and hard to understand, those are the words most often uttered by those who've already seen 'Syriana', but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that 'Syriana' is good cinema.

Like 'Traffic', 'Syriana' has the feel of a documentary. The entire film was shot with just two hand-held cameras, and cinematographer Robert Elswit captures some striking indelible images.

'Syriana' is political because its narrative, albeit a fictional one, advances the view that US foreign policy and military strategy is most definitely dictated by corporate interests, often by oil conglomerates. But it's not just a critique of the US, it also has a storyline showing how Chinese attempts to secure oil in the Middle East can play a role in fanning the flames of Islamic fundamentalism.

'Syriana' is also a well observed portrait of human behaviour in a troubling world of duplicitous and often greedy individuals. Most of the characters lack integrity, honesty and their relationships with others are driven not by compassion and affection but by the dictates of commerce and self interest.

'Syriana' is a film that can make everyone question their personal morality, the motives and concerns of their loved ones, their friends, their work associates and their bosses.

'Syriana' gives us a dense canvas but it warrants a full study. There's a lot to see and there's a lot to learn from it. It won't be to everyone's taste, and even though some aspects of the puzzle are unexplained, after two viewings I'm coming to the conclusion that it is a pretty excellent film.

Tom Brook

Oil in the Aisle

I just went to see Syriana, which was a surprising thing for me to do. I went because Entertainment Weekly convinced me it was a BIG. IMPORTANT. MOVIE. You know it's a BIG. IMPORTANT. MOVIE. because there are 72 plotlines and George Clooney is fat and worried looking. Also because it looks like it was shot on a cellphone and all the color has been drained from the film. I'm sort of an idiot, so I couldn't really follow all of the plotlines, but this is what I was able to glean from it: BLAH BLAH BLAH cute Muslim boys BLAH BLAH BLAH oil is important BLAH BLAH BLAH Matt Damon's nose BLAH BLAH BLAH George Clooney has some fingernail problems. OH, and let's see... I figured out Jeffrey Wright was in over his head in Washington because he didn't use a half-Windsor knot on his ties like the other guys.

It didn't really matter if you got what was going on or not, though, because if you sat still for three minutes, a new plot would start in a new country, and maybe you'd get THAT one. The best storyline was the one where Matt Damon had to chose between his wife (played by Amanda Peet or maybe Maria Shriver) and his hot new boyfriend, the Prince of Katscanistan (see above). As if that was a choice. The most boring storyline was Jeffrey Wright's, and that's a shame because this was his first time getting above-the-title billing (which I'm sure his agent REALLY LOBBIED HARD for) and everyone walked away from it thinking what a pudgy little bore he was and how we all hope that he goes back to playing faggots on Broadway SOON.

But don't get me wrong – this is a positive review. Go see it.

– James St. James

PUBLISHED ON DECEMBER 8, 2005:

Plot-Weaving Clinic
Complex and intricate, 'Syriana' is well worth two-plus hours of your life

By JAMES DIGIOVANNA

I remember a few years ago thinking that Alexander Siddig (best known as Dr. Bashir in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) would never get a lead role, because his particular look is way too unpopular. That's just sad, because he's an excellent and charismatic actor, and while we now make some small space for black and east Asian actors as stars, it will probably be a while before anyone who looks vaguely Middle Eastern gets to karate chop a bad guy while para-gliding on a sea of bikini models.

However, while he doesn't have the lead role in Syriana, that's only because there is no lead role in this intricate political thriller. The film tells five seemingly disparate stories, and then very slowly weaves them together into a seamless whole. That's a lot harder than it sounds; complex films tend to have gaps or to rely on plot contrivances that seem as artificial as a Twinkie lying on Pamela Anderson's chest.

In Syriana, though, the end result makes perfect sense, has no holes and is so completely plausible that you'll think you were watching a documentary. Since practically everything that occurs after the first 40 seconds is a plot twist, I can't really talk about it without spoiling some stuff, so if you hate spoilers, just don't read the part where I mention that Kevin Costner really is the Russian spy. I mean the part where I talk about the plot.

In bringing the story to life, Siddig is joined by George Clooney, who made himself fat and ugly for the role, even though no one will praise him the way they did when Charlize Theron did it for Monster because, let's face it, Clooney just was never as pretty as Charlize Theron. Matt Damon and the incomparable Jeffrey Wright round out the lead cast, with a supporting list that includes such luminaries as Chris Cooper, Christopher Plummer and 60 people whose names are not "Chris."

Siddig plays the heir-apparent to an fictional, oil-rich nation somewhere in the Persian Gulf. While he plots to make sure that he, and not his dissolute brother, take the throne, an assets manager (Matt Damon) tries to get close to him, succeeding only when a horrible tragedy occurs.

After that, the two of them try to steer Fictional Countrystan toward something like prosperity and democracy. Unfortunately, a consortium of oil companies seems to have other plans. Their leaders are also members of the secretive Committee to Liberate Iran's People and, While We're at It, Her Vast Fields of Oil. But they're being investigated by the United States Justice Department, which doesn't really want to stop their nefarious plans, but has to put on some kind of show since the oil companies in question are more corrupt than a 10-day-old piece of cheese that's been etched with Karl Rove's personal diary.

Also meanwhile, a CIA agent (the newly fat version of George Clooney) is being enlisted to kill people who are either allied with terrorism, or who just want to get a fair price for some oil, which is basically the same thing. And in yet another meanwhile, some workers who are downsized when two oil companies merge decide that maybe it would be a good idea to join a terrorist cell, since not much else is happening in their lives, and also they hate our freedoms, if those freedoms include the freedom to steal their livelihood and force them into a life of penury.

But for all this, writer/director Stephen Gaghan doesn't make the mistake of letting the politics bog down the thrills. The few cases where characters make speeches actually further the plot. When the various sides get their moments to pontificate, it has a lot more to do with building character and suspense than with ramming a political agenda into the film.

Which is not to say that Syriana is perfect. This is Gaghan's first film, not counting the direct-to-thrift-store Katie Holmes' vehicle Abandon, and he makes a few rookie mistakes. First off, Jeffrey Wright's really stunning acting abilities probably impressed Gaghan too much, because he adds in an unnecessary story about Wright's alcoholic father that does nothing for the plot and doesn't really add to the character.

Second, he shoots a lot of the interiors with a bluish tint, and that's just been done to death and has come to feel tremendously artificial. A slightly warmer lighting would have made the handheld photography appear a little more natural, which would have worked for the general feel of the film.

Finally, there's so much plot to spin out that the film isn't as tense as it should be. It just takes a long time for the central human conflict to arise, and while the final sequences are taut, getting there isn't as thrilling as it could be.

Though it's not boring, either, and it's well worth the trip. Plus, his exterior shots all look great. Gaghan and cinematographer Robert Elswit (Punch-Drunk Love, Magnolia, Boogie Nights) favor a hazy, dusty look that captures a certain sweaty uncertainty. It's a look that manages to enhance the mood without drawing too much attention to itself, which is important in a film as rich in information as Syriana.

So if your butt can take 2 hours and 6 minutes of tremendous complexity, and you like films that don't pretend their audiences are just stopping off on the way home from a special-ed class, Syriana may give you the intellectual puzzles, punch-in-the-gut acting and delayed-gratification thrills you're looking for.

No Blood for Oil
It isn’t the warmest, but the socially conscious Syriana is still Syriously good.

By KRISTIAN LIN

Syriana
Starring George Clooney, Alexander Siddig, Mazhar Munir, and Matt Damon. Written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, based on Robert Baer’s memoir. Rated R.

The movie doesn’t tell you, so I will: The title of Syriana refers to an idea in certain Washington policy-making circles that American intervention might somehow turn the troublesome countries of Iran, Iraq, and Syria into a region of U.S.-friendly nations that will compliantly hand over their oil reserves at reasonable prices. Of course, this is only a pipe dream, and Syriana sees that quite clearly. Intelligent, socially conscious, and sturdily constructed, the film exposes the incredibly complicated workings of an industry that few Westerners can live without, set in a part of the world bubbling with religious and political strife. The movie imparts a great deal of information, resists easy answers and tidy resolutions, and yet still has the tension and punch of a Hollywood thriller.

That’s a lot going for it, but let’s not get carried away, as some critics inevitably will. This isn’t a great movie, only a very good one. Its many characters are drawn skillfully and conscientiously, but none of them emerges from the crowd to truly gain your sympathy. The picture has nothing like the undercurrent of mourning and bereavement in The Constant Gardener that tips the scales in favor of Fernando Meirelles’ thriller. The only emotion I could get out of Syriana was an overwhelming desire to strap on a bomb and run toward the nearest gathering of petroleum executives. (Oh, like you weren’t thinking the same thing this past summer when you were coughing up $3 a gallon at the pump.)

Writer-director Stephen Gaghan made his name penning the script for Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic before debuting as a director with the intriguing though failed 2002 supernatural thriller Abandon. His current film is inspired by the book See No Evil, an account by former CIA agent Robert Baer of his 15 years of fieldwork in the Middle East, though the movie bears little resemblance to Baer’s policy tome. Like Traffic, this film features a far-flung plot that reaches across the globe.

The most interesting plotline takes place in an unnamed Persian Gulf country where Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), an American analyst for a Swiss company trading in energy stocks, is trying to advance a business proposal to the ailing head of the royal family. Bryan’s efforts go nowhere until his young son dies in the emir’s swimming pool during a party. As a token of condolence, the emir’s son, Prince Nasir (Sudanese actor Alexander Siddig), offers him a deal worth $75 million. Bryan responds by asking, “How much would you give me for my other kid?” before launching into a rant about how corrupt and socially backward the oil-rich Arab countries are. His uncharacteristic burst of candor wins over the Western-educated prince, who wants democracy and sweeping social reform for his nation. Unfortunately, Prince Nasir’s vision includes maximizing profits by sending his oil to Europe and China instead of America, and that’s enough to put his name on a CIA hit list.

Other major players here are a CIA agent (George Clooney, packing some extra pounds) trying to arrange the hit, an unassuming D.C. lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) playing Machiavellian power games to get an oil-company merger approved by the U.S. Justice Department, and a Pakistani oil-field worker (Mazhar Munir) who becomes a suicide bomber after losing his job and being mistreated by the Arab country where he used to work. There’s enough story material to fill a three-hour movie, and remarkably, it’s all crammed into just over two hours. The film isn’t seamless — a splenetic monologue about the benefits of corruption delivered by a jail-bound Texas oilman (Tim Blake Nelson) erupts out of nowhere. Still, Gaghan deftly juggles his storylines and shows the connections among country-club lawyers in Houston, machine-gun-toting Hezbollah thugs in Beirut, and a cadre of Arabic-speaking Chinese businessmen.

He never loses sight of the bigger picture, either. The world of Syriana is a poisonous place where every character winds up selling out or being sold out by someone else, and the few like Prince Nasir who have a grander vision are brought down by people blinded by short-term gain and self-interest. In this context, the suicide bomber’s self-sacrificing rejection of the material world starts to make sense. (Though his victims probably wouldn’t appreciate his chosen act of spiritual enlightenment.)

With all this, the movie could have been a masterpiece had it provided any sort of a catharsis. None of the characters has enough traction to qualify as a tragic hero, and none of the actors can give his role the proper weight, though Siddig comes close. You leave the theater considerably enlightened but unmoved on any deeper level. Brilliant and commendable as it is, Syriana is about as warm as a policy brief. Yet admittedly, it’s a lot more compelling.