Syriana Review
by Jerry Saravia (faustus_08520 AT yahoo DOT com)February 1st, 2006
SYRIANA (2005)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Viewed on January 31st, 2006
RATING: Two and a half stars
As of this writing, Exxon Mobil has just garnered 104 billion in profits. No surprise considering the price hikes in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Oil is all that accounts for anything in the political drama "Syriana," a film bent on placing characters in situations beyond their control and our control.
George Clooney plays a paunchy, slightly hunched-over CIA
operative, Bob Barnes, who is sent on a mission to
assassinate one of two Saudi princes. Barnes's mission is
derailed when he is bound by duct tape and tortured by some anonymous contact. Reasons are never made clear but we
do know that it'll take time for him to grow back a few fingernails. Barnes is still on a mission but he wants to know why the
CIA is turning their backs on him. Did Barnes screw up or
is the Saudi prince a casualty that the government and big
corporations cannot afford?
The Saudi prince is Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) and he is hopeful he will be the next emir (king to the rest of you). He is also ambitious and smart and has a collective interest in
maintaining a business relationship with America and China. His American contact is energy analyst, Bryan Woodman
(Matt Damon) who, in a brilliantly written scene, explains
how the Saudis are economically irresponsible and regressing in their business interests. That is quite a dig at the Saudis, isn't it Mr. President?
Next there's a Washington attorney, Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) whose job is to investigate the merger between the
two oil companies, though he finds there are discrepancies
and corrupt people within (as if that was any surprise). Is he willing to help the hand that feeds him or will he bite? Holiday also has a drunk father who sits on the stoop every day waiting for him, and also has the tendency to check on
his son's notes on the bulletin board.
There are other characters in this melting mix of conspiracy and corruption and it is tough keeping track of who is who. Part of the reason may be that writer-director Stephen Gaghan (who also wrote "Traffic") doesn't spend much time on
characters or motivations - he just wants to rub our noses in these scandalous times and ask us to be shocked. I was, but not as much at the evil, greedy corporations that exist (a
cinematic cliche for more than three decades now), not to
mention our own government, but at how little I got to know the participants in the puzzle that Gaghan has constructed
for us.
This movie is all over the map, never quite zeroing in on any particular situation or event. I have no problem with Gaghan's structure, which certainly worked in "Traffic" and has been a staple of director Robert Altman's for quite some time. But such a structure can also produce its own flaws. "Syriana"
assumes that big corporations and Saudis investing in oil profits, first for the benefit of mergers and raking in the big bucks, and secondly for the benefit of the American people (what
benefit is there if gas prices alarmingly go up and down?)
while CIA operatives are scapegoated and political turmoil
ensues with radical Islamic bombers, is enough reason to
give it urgency. To some extent it is, considering our current political climate, but the movie operates under exclamation marks with a clearly liberalist agenda. I do not object to
setting a political agenda in a film as long as the characters within the framework are not one-dimensional. Unfortunately, for "Syriana," they are and we are left fending for something to grab hold of.
Clooney's bearded Barnes, who is shown wasted and out of breath throughout (a far cry from his heroic role in "The Peacemaker"), is a man with nothing when he's made the patsy by the CIA. We learn that his son goes to Princeton and his wife may leave him, but not much else. Theoretically, that is an accurate assessment of a CIA operative but, for this movie, less is less and we never really care about him or his mission.
Matt Damon comes off strongest in the film as Woodman, strongly affected by the accidental death of his son and using it to support an idealistic prince. However, we are not given much insight into Woodman's plans either, and his supposed realization in the end that family matters may as well have drifted in from a Disney flick.
Jeffrey Wright is also firm and commanding as the attorney Holiday, though one is never sure where his trust truly lies. There's also Christopher Plummer and Chris Cooper in the kind of roles we've seen them play before in their sleep.
"Syriana" is not so much confusing as it is exhausting, with too many conflicts and not much human interaction for the audience. It is like watching a bunch of stick figures in a maze, never quite knowing where any of them belong. The message of the movie is that greed corrupts everyone and that the one commodity of
interest in these turbulent times, oil, is all that matters. It is a cynical (and possibly) truthful assertion, but it needs some emotional weight.
I admire some of the performances and some of the writing
(including a nail-biting description of the nature of corruption) and there are some intriguing scenes in "Syriana," but it is an underwhelmingly cold movie. Personally, I like a little more dimension with cooly extreme political views.
For more reviews, check out JERRY AT THE MOVIES at:
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