Syriana review

2006.01.20 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole

I'm going to have to watch Syriana again when it comes out on video. It's a confusing bit of cinema, something along the lines of The Big Sleep, where you are never quite sure what's going on, why, or who is doing it to whom. In The Big Sleep, this was accidental, and even tho I'm a big fan of noir and of Humphrey Bogart especially, to this day I can't tell you exactly what was going on, let alone why female taxi drivers and bookstore clerks kept coming on to Bogie. In Syriana, I think I figured out pretty much what was going on, but in the end it seemed much simpler than we were led to believe.

The film stars George Clooney as a pudgy, bearded covert CIA agent who has loyally done his bosses' bidding for twenty years or more, and Matt Damon is some sort of businessman that talks about money. The third piece of the puzzle, and, oddly, more or less the real protagonist, is Jeffrey Wright as a lawyer asked by the government to investigate a proposed energy company merger and who finds a lot more. I think. Seriously, the film is not even very clear on who these people are or what they do for a living.

Wright's character is the driver, propelling the story from beginning to end. Matt Damon's character is an ingenue (can a dude be an ingenue? I'll consult the French film academy) who attempts to wheedle his way into the good graces of the heir apparent of the emir of Syriana. Clooney's character is a tool of people we don't trust.

All three do a great job and have wonderful support from Christopher Plummer, Chris Cooper, and Akbar Kurtha as the Saudi—I mean Syrianian—prince. Amanda Peet does a decent job, but for being pretty much the only woman in the film not wearing a sheet over her head, I would have hoped for better.

The film was written and directed by Stephen Gaghan (Abandon), from a book by Robert Baer. It plays out in something of a documentary form, with bits and pieces of different stories told with no particular organization. The stories rarely connect, and I found myself confused partly by the lack of that connection. The subplot about Pakistani workers in Syriana seemed to go nowhere at all.

Aside from a title that sounds like a Toto song, there's also a misstep in a scene in which Tim Blake Nelson gives a little speech about how great corruption is. It feels like it's supposed to be a seminal moment in cinema, at least as memorable as the "greed is good" speech in Wall Street, but it falls flat, mainly because there's just no up-side to corruption; it really does suck. It could have been a seminal moment if the protagonist had responded with a scathing speech of his own, flatly explaining that corruption makes the world less efficient, and that makes it inherently bad.

However, the storytelling is so matter-of-fact, and the acting is so compelling, that the film wins out in the end despite its opacity. The ending isn't so much of a twist as it is a sand storm. You don't know when it's coming, but it's coming, and it may be interesting but it's not going to be fun.

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