Syriana

In reference to a newly-merged oil company, one character says to another that they have just visited what will be the biggest company in America, "as long as they don't start to run cars on water and there is still chaos in the Middle East." Syriana is about the poisonous, corrupting nexus of big oil companies and geopolitics. With enough plot for a miniseries packed into a 2-hour film, Syriana's story threads include: a grizzled CIA ground soldier in the Middle East (George Clooney); an energy analyst for a derivatives trading company (Matt Damon); a lawyer called in to give the impression of due diligence when the Justice Department goes sniffing around a merger between Connex and Killen, two U.S. oil companies (Jeffrey Wright); a royal prince bent on reforming his Persian Gulf country (Alexander Siddig); and an itinerant oil field worker from Pakistan who is thrown out of work by Connex-Killen, becoming a ripe target for religious fundamentalists.



Writer/director Stephen Gaghan won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Traffic, and his writing here is similarly layered and complex, based on the book See No Evil by ex-CIA agent Robert Bauer. No character in the film knows the whole picture, and we as the audience are not meant to understand it either. We're just meant to know that this shit is going down, and that the exploitation of a natural resource, oil, is having a morally devastating impact on humanity. That's all you need to know; the plot washes over you. But to its credit, Syriana is always complicated, but never frustrating. Gaghan, in his second film as director, turns out to be a talented filmmaker, and the piece is edited with clarity and precision.

In a uniformly superb cast, George Clooney stands out in a performance worthy of a veteran charactor actor. He inhabits the role of George Barnes to the extent that you feel weariness, confusion, anger, and, ultimately, reawakened moral clarity leaking out of his pores. Clooney's transformation goes way beyond his reported weight gain; its another bullseye in an impressive career dedication to meatier roles post-Batman & Robin.

Syriana is a must-see for anyone even vaguely interested in modern geopolitics, and beyond its political interest, it's a terrific drama. Definitely one of 2005's best films.