Syriana - A Middle East muddle
Kirk Honeycutt

LOS ANGELES—Stephen Gaghan, who wrote Steven Soderbergh’s “Traffic,” a movie about the international drug trade, takes on a different kind of addiction — oil — with “Syriana,” his second directing effort. His approach is similar. The movie, which he also wrote, moves back and forth among several story lines involving the global oil industry, Middle East politics and terrorism, all of which intersect at key moments. This time, however, the character and geographical jumps leave you in a muddle with thinly sketched personalities and confusing plot points. Worse, dialogue dense with nuance and shaded meaning flies by too quickly. So what “Syriana” feels like is a television miniseries condensed into two hours.
Gaghan directs the film as if it were a thriller, and Alexandre Desplat’s pulsating music encourages this notion. Ultimately, though, the film is too talky to thrill mainstream audiences. Despite the presence of stars George Clooney and Matt Damon, the film might play more comfortably to older adults in major markets than the under-25 crowd.
Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) awarded natural gas drilling rights in his oil-producing Gulf state to the Chinese, which is a serious blow to Texas energy giant Connex. To counteract this loss, Connex seeks a merger with Killen, a smaller oil company owned by Jimmy Pope (Chris Cooper). Killen has just won drilling rights in Kazakhstan. Both the merger and this surprising contract attract the scrutiny of the Justice Department, which assumes hanky-panky is involved.
Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer) heads a powerful D.C. law firm hired to guide the merger through the tricky shoals of inside-the-Beltway politics. He asks ambitious attorney Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) to perform due diligence, which in this case means give Justice a scapegoat or two to make certain the deal goes through. Whiting also seeks to undo the Chinese deal by going behind the prince’s back to his younger brother Prince Meshal (Akbar Kurtha) and his venal father to ensure that he aging Emir picks the younger man as his successor.
Meanwhile, Prince Nasir asks energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Damon) and his Geneva-based energy trading company to consult on maximizing oil profits so he might reform his corrupt country. This alliance is partially a debt of guilt, as the family feels responsible for the death of Bryan’s young son in a swimming pool accident at their villa. Bryan’s willingness to accept the offer drives a wedge between him and wife Julie (Amanda Peet).
Another story line follow the ups and downs of veteran CIA agent Bob Barnes (Clooney) on assignment in the Middle East. He succeeds in assassinating two arms dealers in Tehran, but in the process a Stinger missile falls into the hands of a shady Arab. His next assignment is the assassination of Prince Nasir. Evidently, the U.S. government shares Connex’s concern about the Chinese deal. Then two double crosses, by a contact in the field and by the CIA itself, turn him into a rogue agent.
Clearly, the film supports the view that America’s addiction to oil drives all its Middle Eastern policies; the superpower will stop at nothing — not corruption, war or assassination — to tie up oil rights. While the view is not unjustified, this creates a simplistic good guys/bad guys situation that is dramatically uninteresting. So much more goes into the turmoil in the Middle East.