Review of Syriana (2005) by Christopher S — 30 Apr 2010

Watched on 7/4/11:

This movie may be enjoyable to the average Masters Degree holder of Political Science or anyone affiliated to the oil industry, but to the average movie fan looking for an enjoyable escape - For the love of all things holy - STAY AWAY!!! I'm a big movie fan and see most movies and for the most part enjoy all genres. Action, Adventure, Drama, even Chick Flicks at times, and I rarely dislike films for the most part, even bad ones are usually tolerable. But I have to stand up for all the movie fans out there like myself, just looking to see a good flick, something fun with the basic feature of being understandable - This is not it!

Simply put: the movie is boring. Clichà (C) upon clichà (C) is confirmed and story lines never come together. It seems as if the director was unsure whether to make a movie or a documentary. The main plot is very thin (a CIA agent is ordered to kill an oil prince, gets caught and then warns the prince (why?)) and therefore some elements were added to make the movie more interesting. So, a kid dies, which results in the "natural" response of the father: freely advising the person indirectly responsible for his son's death. The lawyer has a drunk "dad" who always finds himself on his doorstep, why, no one knows. Some kids become suicide terrorists and blow up a ship....Ok...I mean this movie being compared to Traffic is ridiculous! Sure it tries to have that similar style of having many small stories with many different characters that TYPICALLY all come together in the end, but Syriana just left you hanging! I sat there waiting for something to happen but it just didn't! There was no resolve, no story, no nothing. Just a bunch of political jibber jabber that made no sense. I not only didn't understand what anyone was saying or doing throughout the entire show, but after awhile I just didn't care. I just wanted the nightmare to end so I could go home and chew on Reynolds Wrap.

The only aspect of this film worth any real praise is Clooney's performance. Although it may not have been as Oscar worthy as some of his others, he is the only character that we actually feel is real and not simply a stereotype. Clooney makes Bob a sad, lonely figure who has a need to know what is happening and why. I only wish I new what was happening, since Gaghan seems to pile on story after story while "interconnecting" them in ways only slightly more meaningful than those in "Crash".

Besides Clooney, Gaghan has certainly assembled an extensive cast, Matt Damon is ideally cast as Bryan Woodman, a derivatives trader and global finance expert who provides guidance to the "good" son, a progressive Arab prince who really wants to restructure his country's economy for lasting benefit to its citizenry. Jeffrey Wright continues to impress as Bennett Holiday, an ambitious Washington lawyer ordered by his boss to not only vet the oil merger but rubber stamp it. Intriguingly, all three characters have been given more personal profiles - Barnes has a college-age son with whom he feels estranged, Woodman goes through the loss of a child, and Holiday has a resentful alcoholic father - but none of these dimensions are explored with any depth. We also get solid performances from Alexander Siddig as the reform-minded Prince Nasir Al-Subaai, Chris Cooper as one of the oil company CEOs, Christopher Plummer as Holiday's corrupt boss, Jayne Atkinson as the poker-faced CIA division chief, and Amanda Peet as Woodman's inconsolable wife. In even smaller roles are stalwarts such as William Hurt, David Clennon, an emphatic Tim Blake Nelson and The Marvelous Mark Strong who has another strong if not too short performance. Despite the film's intentions and often powerful execution, I just wish the film was far less convoluted and the storyline more streamlined within its framework. By the way, one of many unexplained details is the title, Syriana, which is a Washington insider term referring to the notion that the US can recast developing nations in our own image.

Ultimately, Syriana not only fails as a thriller, (because it is too confusing and complex to have a tight ending or focus) or a drama (some of the situations these characters are in seem artificial and a few of the actors are not to the task of creating meaningful and relatable characters), but also as a message film because you really won't find anything in this film about Middle Eastern culture or the oil business that you either didn't already know and have opinions about. No doubt the filmmakers had good intentions when making the film, but ultimately it feels over-elaborate, showy and pretentious.