Syriana

When I first saw the trailer for Syriana, I was left with an incorrect perspective about what the movie was about. I gathered that it was about oil, but for some reason, I thought Matt Damon was going to be a ruthless oil executive who would serve as the film's bad guy. Suffice it to say, first impressions aren't always correct. But filmed in a style very reminiscent of Traffic (quite possibly because director Stephen Gaghan wrote the screenplay for Traffic), Syriana has simultaneously been praised and damned because of its examination of America's dependence upon foreign oil—praised because it asks some very harsh questions, damned because it's also been viewed as a George Clooney anti-Republican movie (which wasn't at all how I saw it).

One of the more common complaints I've heard about Syriana is that it's too heavy-handed, too hard to follow. I didn't find it hard to follow per se, but it did throw a hell of a lot at the viewer, and required the viewer to pay close attention to every detail of every scene, to every line of dialogue. For example, in one of the earliest scenes, where Christopher Plummer is gardening in his home, he summarizes current oil events for Jeffrey Wright—all of which are integral to the plot that follows. If you miss that scene, you'll be lost, because immediately on the heels of this scene, we go right into the boardroom of a Texas oil company, the recently merged Connex-Killen, all talking about their recent loss of oil-drilling rights in the Middle East. (This was one of the events that Christopher Plummer summarized only seconds beforehand.) But Syriana serves up multiple storylines that all interconnect at various points, some more so than others, and all examining how the oil industry plays a part on their lives.

The film opens up wonderfully—low-key Middle Eastern-sounding music rising with the morning dawn (great soundtrack, too, by the way!), silent scenes of blue-collar Middle Eastern workers boarding a bus to work at the oil refineries, before landing us in Tehran where George Clooney (fully shed of his sexy-man image with a beard and 35 extra pounds to his middle) is negotiating the sale of two missiles to some high-profile black market arms dealers. But in the midst of the sale, one of the missiles is taken away and given to a third party, a blue-eyed Egyptian that Clooney doesn't seem to trust (probably because this Egyptian stuck a gun in Clooney's face when he approached him). After this, Elvis Clooney leaves the building, and briskly walks away while the two arms dealers load the remaining missile into their car—just before the car blows up (a scene made popular by the trailer). Hmm, just another day on the job for this CIA agent? For that's the role that Clooney plays in Syriana—CIA operative Bob Barnes, a specialist on the Middle East, but who's well past his prime and is being considered for a desk job back home, where he can quietly be forgotten. . . . Though he's anything but forgotten when he's chosen for a special mission that reunites him with a former colleague who may or may not have crossed over to the other side.

Jeffrey Wright plays Bennett Holiday, a government lawyer who's looking into the merger of Connex and Killen—i.e., investigating whether it was done legitimately, because Killen, pre-merger, had managed to acquire the drilling rights to one of the most coveted oil fields in the world. The investigation basically asks the question, how could an oil company this small catch the holy grail of oil fields without paying somebody off? This is what Bennett Holiday must find out, and I must confess, I still find his character something of a noodle-scratcher, because when he's introduced, you think he's going to be the one guy who uncovers all the corruption so that the necessary bad guys can go to jail. But by the end, he's realized a valuable lesson—that in order to succeed, you need to get your own hands dirty . . . and dirty he gets them by ultimately selling out his boss so that the merger of Connex and Killen can be approved by the Justice Department. The simplicity of one line he gives to Chris Cooper sends chills up my spine: "We're looking for the illusion of due diligence."

Following on that, I've already heard Tim Blake Nelson's corruption speech labeled as the 21st century's version of the "Greed is good" speech from Wall Street. I'll let the scene speak for itself here.



Matt Damon, though, I felt was miscast. His character, Bryan Woodman, is an energy analyst living in Switzerland with his family. One weekend, he scores tickets to a party thrown by the Emir of an unnamed Arab country—and his son gets accidentally electrocuted in the swimming pool. So Woodman, as a gesture of compensation, is brought under the wing of the young Prince Nasir al-Subai, to serve as his economic advisor. Their relationship is tense at first, and Woodman gives him some serious mouthfuls about the economic future of the prince's country, particularly with respect to commoditizing its oil. His line, "This is a fight to the death!" says it all about the oil industry. And that scene was probably his one shining moment in the film.



I say Matt Damon was miscast, though, because he gives a very wooden, very surface performance, with little depth of character. And I would like to have seen him developed better, because it just felt like Matt Damon was reciting lines and not giving an in-depth, emotional performance that I've come to know from him.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Alexander Siddig in the role of Prince Nasir al-Subai. I'll always remember him as Dr. Bashir from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but it was very refreshing to see him tackle a serious cinematic role. And I must say, he pulled off this role quite brilliantly—locked in a power struggle between himself and his brother over who will inherit the throne of his country. The premise is, the weaker younger brother is friendly with American interests in the region, but Nasir wants to distance himself from the West and rebuild his country his own way—not in a dictatorship sort of way, but in a way where the country can prosper economically and financially, moving from extreme poverty to one of strong economy. In a way, Nasir is supposed to serve as a modern-day Mossadegh, and his determination to rebuild his country on its own terms was evidenced in the beginning by granting the oil-drilling rights in his country to the Chinese instead of the U.S. (i.e., Connex-Killen) . . . which puts him in the limelight, because in that capacity, he's a threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East, and Clooney's Bob Barnes may or may not have him in his sights.

And as the final ingredient to this mixture, we begin to follow two Arab teenagers as they try to find work after being laid off from the Connex-Killen oil refinery (the refinery in question switched hands to the Chinese, remember?). In the midst of their struggles, they stumble across the blue-eyed Egyptian from earlier, who brings them into his circle where they can learn about the teachings of the Koran . . . and later on, he shows the two boys the missile he snuck away from Bob Barnes.

One running theme throughout Syriana (irrespective of the oil industry, that is) is the relationships that exist between father and son. Bennett Holiday is frequently seen at odds with his live-in alcoholic father, and while they two speak very little to each other, their resentment for each other is embodied by the tension that permeates their house, and by what is not said. The one Arab teenager is frequently accompanied by his father, also laid off from the Connex-Killen refinery but often speaking idyllically about the snow-covered mountains from his home in Pakistan. Bryan Woodman's loss of his oldest son served as the catalyst for his meeting with Prince Nasir. Bob Barnes struggles to connect with his college-age son, whose feelings on both his parents were summed up with the proclamation, "Both my parents are professional liars." But most of all, the relationship between the two Arab princes and their Emir father serves as a central keystone for Syriana, for hanging over all their heads is the question of who will inherit their country's throne, and it's no secret that the two brothers don't get along and have different ideas about how to rule.

Much has been said about George Clooney's Oscar win for Syriana, but I was actually very glad that he won! I don't say that because of his politics, but because I genuinely thought his acting was stellar in this movie (on Oscar night, I was actually cheering for either him or Matt Dillon to win). He shed his usual charismatic role and instead went for a serious drama that challenged him to deliver—and deliver he did! He gave us a character who was used up, burned out, trying to scrape it all together to do what he felt was the right thing, and having to endure terrible torture for the knowledge that he held (his torture scene still makes me cringe). I would also have favored an Oscar nomination for Alexander Siddig, for his no-nonsense clarity about where his country was headed naturally made him jaded, and he probably saw himself as the last best hope for his country to be meaningful again.

I can't speak to the authenticity of Syriana, i.e., if this kind of dirty political gaming really represents a day in the life of the oil industry, but it does ask some rather serious questions that need answering. Such as, how much are these oil-rich countries being suppressed because of their resources? Just how depleted are the world's oil supplies? It's been speculated for many years that America is only in the Middle East because of its oil interests, and while I can't speak authoritatively on that, Syriana does little to counter that argument. In fact, when the liquid natural gas facility gets attacked at the end, it makes the argument that a vicious cycle is born from our oil dependence.

In the final analysis, Syriana is a devastating examination of the oil industry, and when all is said and done, you're left (pardon the pun) shocked and awed . . . but if you're a cynic like me, you're not at all surprised. 9 out of 10.