Syriana

I know, this is going to make me look like the worst kind of zombie (actually, are there grades of zombies?), but I'm going to have to go along with Mr. G. Kenny again. Who wrote the longest review I can remember him writing, giving his point of view on why this film isn't as good as it seems on the surface. Four tales, interwoven, of people involved in oil in the Middle East. A lawyer (the awesome Jeffrey Wright), a CIA man (George Clooney), a financier/family man (Matt Damon), and a sheikh prince (the inspiring, understated Alexander Siddig). Some of their paths meet, and in the meanwhile, you hear a great deal about oil politics. Because of the quick jumps from storyline to storyline, the film as a whole can be difficult to comprehend. A result of the obvious fact that oil politics are intricate and that this is a "smart" script, meaning clever (sometimes too clever to follow). You won't leave the theater misunderstanding the gist of the screenplay, but you will wonder why it was filmed in the first place (which is Kenny's argument). This is a movie with such a dearth of hope that it leaves you far more depressed about the world we live in, and the America we live in, than before you went to see it. Look, everything about the situation in the Middle East sucks, and the one ray of sunshine in the film has so many powerful people and nations thwarting him that it makes no difference whether his politics are "right" or not. To top it off, at the end of the credits is the URL of a website (http://participate.net/oilchange) where you can learn and act on methods for bringing relief to the Middle East situation. How dare they show us this after leaving us with nothing? How dare they indicate that there is hope when they've just torn down every shred of hope they could muster? Feh. I was willing to give it a decent rating, mostly for performances (and the poster). But what would that serve?

year: 2005
length: 126 min.
rating: 2.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365737/combined