Film review: Syriana

This Week we had to watch the movie Syriana. I have never seen or read any review and I have to say that a really enjoy the movie but didn't understand it very well. The plot of the movie is very complex and it's not easy to follow it, there's many stories, many character that surround "the real story". The movie explains the politics of the oil business and how people are trying to get it (oil).

The world is running out of oil, and both governments and corporations struggle with "the best style of Italian Mafia", to take control over the last "reserves" of world's oil.

(Ebert 2005) Syriana is an endlessly fascinating movie about oil and money, America and China, traders and spies, the Gulf States and Texas, reform and revenge, bribery and betrayal. Its interlocking stories come down to one thing: There is less oil than the world requires, and that will make some people rich and others dead. The movie seems to take sides, but take a step back and look again. It finds all of the players in the oil game corrupt and compromised, and even provides a brilliant speech in defense of corruption, by a Texas oilman (Tim Blake Nelson). This isn't about Left and Right but about Have and Have Not. The movie begins with one of the Gulf states signing a deal to supply its oil to China. This comes as a strategic defeat for Connex, a Texas-based oil company. At the same time, an obscure oil company named Killen signs a deal to drill for oil in Kazakhstan. Connex announces a merger with Killen, to get its hands on the oil, but the merger inspires a Justice Department investigation.

(Osborn 2005) Syriana surrounds a fictitious merger between two oil conglomerates, Connex and Kileen. Jeffrey Wright plays Bennett Holiday, Sydney Hewitt's (Nicky Henson) stooge sent to look into the merger to dispel any corruption before the Department of Justice finds it. Clooney plays Bob Barnes, a CIA operative originally sent into Beirut to snuff out Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Akbar Kurtha), the possible heir to the Iranian throne. And Matt Damon plays Bryan Woodman, the financial advisor to Prince Nasir, who's married to Julie, played by Amanda Peet. To explain the dozens of other, more peripheral characters and their connections to these primary three would take many more pages of explanation, and would ruin the fun of being utterly lost for Syriana's entire first act. Also, these three-Clooney, Damon, and Wright-are the only fully-dimensional characters of the film. They occupy the only roles capable of thoughtful and provoking performances, save Tim Blake Nelson's thunderous speech on corruption. All three actors do well, pulling in possible nomination nods, and accentuating Writer/Director Steven Gaghan's method of understated storytelling. I think Syriana is a great film. I am unable to make my reasons clear without resorting to meaningless generalizations. Individual scenes have fierce focus and power, but the film's overall drift stands apart from them. It seems to imply that these sorts of scenes occur, and always have and always will.

While reading what the critics said about the movie I bumped in to one of the Seattle Post criticized the movie in hardly way because of the "false accusations & revelations" made to business and government corruption.

(Arnold 2005) In this year of record oil prices, oil-company profits and American casualties in Iraq, nothing, of course, could be more timely than a film that tries to lay bare some of the behind-the-scenes avarice and political expediency that has helped create the outrage.

This critic got me thinking about corruption. Whether it's because of oil, petroleum, or other economic interest, corruption exists all over the world, supposedly countries like Colombia are more corrupted than others but, unfortunately politicians all over the world are in a "global trend" of worrying about themselves and stealing people's money.

The lack of moral values and principles govern our world and even the most "respectable diplomatic" can be evolved in this scruple less action. Like my Mother says: "You never know when the heart of some one could be damaged and tented".

I started to look for some reviews that supported my opinion and I obtained infinite results. Here are the ones that I thought where more trustable and alike.

Rolling Stone, Peter Travers: "Takes off with the lightning speed of a thriller, the gonzo force of frontline journalism and the emotional wallop of a drama that puts a human face on shocking statistics"

Washington Post, Desson Thomson: "What's so powerful about the film is the rich stories it tells and how it leads them like so many human tributaries to one black, bubbling source".

New York Magazine, Ken Tucker: "A film that transcends it's obvious timeliness to say some elemental things about personal loyalty and institutional betrayal".

Portland Oregonian, Shawn Levy: "A gripping movie about espionage, loyalty and betrayal"

Time, Richard Corliss: "Not a conventionally satisfying movie but a kind of illustrated journalism: an engrossing, insider's tour of the world's hottest spots, grandest schemes and most dangerous men."

The New York Times, Dana Stevens: "It aims to be a great deal more than a standard geopolitical thriller and thereby succeeds in being one of the best geopolitical thrillers in a very long time".

TV Guide, Ken Fox: "We can only hope that the time frame is meant to be sometime before 9/11, and not after. Either way, it's a troubling vision of how terrorism and "martyrdom" occur on both sides of this ghostly war, and is both perpetrated and facilitated by the very forces enlisted to stop it".

Chicago Reader, J.R. Jones: "This is intelligent, committed, and politically provocative, though its narrative puzzle box may prompt you to throw up your hands and let Exxon go on running the world"

Entertainment Weekly, Lisa Schwarzbaum: "Indeed, the point of Syriana appears to be that the whole lousy, corrupt, oil-producing and -consuming world is a ball of wax, ready to melt"

Bibliography:

Sam Osborn (2005, December 5). Syriana Review. Retrieved, April 15 2009, of http://www.samseescinema.com/

Roger Ebert (2005, December 9). Syriana (R). Retrieved, April 15 2009, of http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/

William Arnold. (2005, December 9). Brave political drama 'Syriana' loses its sting in confusing plot. SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER MOVIE CRITIC. Retrieved April 22, 2009, from www.seattlepi.com/movies/251362_syriana09q.html

http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/syriana

Images were taken from: http://www.shutterstock.com/