Syriana

Matt Damon, George Clooney, William Hurt and Amanda Peet give outstanding performances in this moving, even disturbing, political thriller.

By:Bob Brown
   If you think Big Oil is to blame for skyrocketing gas prices, this film will reinforce all your prejudices and add a few more. The characters and situations are fictional, but it’s "inspired" by Robert Baer’s See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism (2002). Baer, a case officer in the Middle East for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations from 1976 to 1997, became disillusioned with how politics and agency bureaucracy stunted U.S. efforts to nip organized terrorism. His book is an indictment and a call to reverse course.
   In Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude (2003), Baer considered the oil connections. Baer’s agenda is clear, and this film is no less polemical. Writer/director Stephen Gaghan also wrote the script for Traffic (2000), which Syriana resembles, both in its message about government corruption and in its hand-held methods of telling it. Steven Soderbergh, who directed Traffic, was one of the co-executive producers of Syriana, along with George Clooney.
   Besides this, Clooney and Soderbergh have been involved in other films from Participant Productions, whose slogan is, "Movies that move you. A whole new kind of action flick." Participant assumes that movies can and should foment movements. "We hope our films will inspire you to get involved in the issues that affect us all," their Web site says.
   The result? Syriana is moving, even disturbing. For the first two thirds, however, it’s mostly a jumble of characters and bits of their stories, tossed at you in rapid-fire succession. It’s like watching raw footage for a documentary exposé, with jumpy camera work, over-exposure, bits of conversation snapped up as if by a crew hiding behind a two-way mirror. It’s hard to make out who is working for whom, who are the good guys, who are the bad guys.
   And that’s the point. Guys who seem to be good turn out to be schemers who would stab their own supporters in the back. "You just might be a lion who everyone thinks is a lamb," says one character to another. "We are living in complex, difficult times," Gaghan says on the film’s Web site, "and I wanted to reflect this complexity in a visceral way."
   The big picture is of the power in Washington, D.C., which wants to keep a lock on oil and beat the Chinese, who are moving in on Mideast supplies. To that end, the CIA arranges a hit on a liberal-minded Persian Gulf prince who is about to complete a deal with China. The agency also is trying to assure that the prince’s less able but more U.S.-friendly brother will inherit the emirate from his ailing father. This incompetent brother will favor a U.S. oil company, Connex-Killen, a merger of muscle (Connex) with cunning (Killen), after the upstart Killen bribed its way into Kazakhstan’s oil market.
   There are too many characters and subplots to recount here, and too many to flesh out fully in a film of just over two hours. Some characters merely underline how ruthless people can drag hungry but naive people to their doom. One naive is Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), a U.S. oil broker who hopes to strike it rich as financial advisor to Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Alexander Siddig), even though Nasir’s brother, Prince Meshal (Akbar Kurtha), has been tapped to be the next emir. Woodman figures that Nasir’s more enlightened social liberalism will be better for the emirate, and business.
   Bob Barnes (Clooney) is a career CIA operative who has always done as he was told without questions. A risky mission to wipe out Prince Nasir backfires, however, as Barnes is double-crossed, captured, and has his fingernails torn off (the squeamish need not apply). Barnes tries to blackmail his way back into circulation and turn the tables on his handlers.
   Meanwhile, the Connex-Killen merger has sped through congressional approvals, thanks to token firings of two corrupt managers. The consolidation closes some oil-processing facilities in Persian Gulf ports, throwing legions of immigrant laborers out of work. Two of them are swept up into a radical Muslim school, where they are indoctrinated and prepared for a suicide mission against the port facilities.
   Many fine actors give outstanding performances, some in mere cameo roles, including Christopher Plummer as Dean Whiting, a partner in a D.C. law firm investigating the Connex-Killen merger ("In this town, everyone is innocent until they’re investigated"), along with Jeffrey Wright as Bennett Holiday, an associate lawyer who is as ruthless as he is soft-spoken. William Hurt is ex-CIA operative Stan Goff, who advises Barnes on the political facts of life. Amanda Peet, in an uncharacteristically sober performance fully clothed, plays Woodland’s wife; and Chris Cooper plays Jimmy Pope, the Texas wild-catter who founded Killen.
   The film’s tag line is, "Everything is connected." In a rush, all the little bits and pieces knot together in two horrific climaxes and everything becomes disturbingly clear. When the dust settles, it’s hard to find a good guy left standing.
Rated R. Contains violence and language.