Syriana (2005)

Under rated film Nails it.

They nailed it here. Behind the facade of polite manners, crisply ironed suits, dark restaurants, and spotless white robes, those in power know the real story. This is about the ruthless pursuit of power, the people who know the score, how they manipulate almost everyone else, and the consequences.

Intelligent and well considered. This is the first time I'd heard Mossedeq mentioned on TV, Radio or Movies despite the fact that Mossedeq is the pivotal character in the struggle for oil in the Middle East.

As others have pointed out, the story is complex and hard to follow, just like real life.

As Clooney points out, the best character actors in Hollywood all wanted to be in this film, and they picked the best, so although few characters are well developed, they are all VERY believable. The lust for power, bubbles palpably under the surface of most of them, and the Faustian bargains they knowingly make are ugly.

If this movie doesn't scare you and make you fear for your children nothing will. July 10, 2008

Asks serious questions, but not for the faint of heart

SYRIANA, starring George Clooney, is a film loosely based on the book SEE NO EVIL by former CIA operative Richard Baer, who had ground experience in various countries of the middle east.

However, this movie throws a bigger net over the lead character's adventures and misadventures. The center of the plot, the fight between the Sheik's two sons to inherit his kingdom, is clearly set in Saudi Arabia, but the movie was filmed in Dubai, UAE. The conspiracy -- if you want to call it that -- among big oil, the US intelligence community and the rulers of oil-rich nations asks serious and sometimes tragic questions. ** SPOILERS FROM HERE ON **

Politics aside, this is a good foreign-espionage film to watch although some of the metaphors are a little too earnest: the same local workers in Pseudo Arabia who are dumped by a big American oil company about to merge with another, quickly are transfomed by the film into students of militant Islam. Okay, we get the irony!

In a related subplot, Matt Damon plays an American TV business reporer who apparently cannot speak Arabic and has a surprisingly poor take on local politics: he wastes time chatting on the cell phone right near the steps where a critical speech is being made, revealing how little he knows about the Sheik's son's politics: "His private plane is great!"

Earlier in the film, he and wife (Amanda Peet) witness their six-year-old son's accidental electrocution due to a faulty underwater pool light that was energized when the lights were turned on at a chic Arab-American party set in probably what is meant to indicate Riyadh. To Damon, a rich oil city such as Riyadh or coastal Dubai looks so Houstonian with its air-conditioning, freeways, Euro-American food and strip malls, that he is allowed to sail through this film with blockheaded complacency intact. (To be fair, his wife gets the idea after her first son's electrocution and flies back to the States with their toddler.)

I'm not sure why we the audience got clobbered with this plot turn, but the message registers to us, if not to Damon's character, that things only LOOK the same in the Mideast as in the USA, but aren't the same underneath.

So let your conscience be your guide on buying this DVD at a bargain price. The acting is top-notch but I'm not giving the full five stars because the lumpy plot is a little too contrived and perhaps a bit too paranoid (or tilting at corporate windmills ....?), too.
June 23, 2008

Confusing but Enlightening

Syriana is deliberately confusing.

You have to stick with it or you will be lost.

The characters are not one-dimensional: all represent shadings of good and bad, and all can be corrupted by the system of Oil at Any Price.

The only fully decent character--the reformist Sheik--is killed by the CIA, for that very decency. (He wants to help his people, rather than the oil companies.)

The Matt Damon character grows in moral maturity before your very eyes. When his son dies, he must face the choice between giving up his wife and doing the right thing, or selling out and keeping his wife. To his credit--and with terrible difficulty--he lets the wife go.

The U.S. govt. lawyer, on the other hand, states his price and sells his principles (and the sheik, and the sheik's country) out.

The Clooney character comes to realize the nature of the business he is in only when it turns and bites him--in the shape of gruesome torture and threats to his family. Like the Damon character, he renounces evil in the name of good, and gives up the whole thing.

Naturally, as in all politics, might makes right, and the good guys lose.

But we see how such a system destroys people and countries, and recruits self-righteous terrorists who aren't going to quit. May 22, 2008

Like Going to the Dentist

What happened to the days when watching a movie was an escapist experience? This movie makes you look at the clock more than the subtitles (which you have to have on, in order to follow the droll, elephant trodding they call a script)!

I hope the negatives are lost for the sake of posterity.

Clooney sucks also...as usual.


Jack May 16, 2008

Please stop making shaky movies!

Is there a tripod shortage in this world? Why is everbody and his brother making hand held movies that shake so much that it makes my dizzy? Also, why do people go for these disjointed movies? Does it make people feel smart that they can understand the story? This movie reminded my of Babel. Both movies sucked. May 13, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...