Egypt Syriana actor sees Hollywood gaining nerve
From Amil Khan

CAIRO—An Egyptian actor in a movie about oil and violence in the Middle East has praised Hollywood for taking a frank look at the region and showing nuanced characters instead of trading on stereotypes of Arabs as terrorists. Amr Waked, who plays an Egyptian grooming young men to be suicide bombers in “Syriana,” said the $50 million political thriller about torture, terrorism, global politics and the oil industry was a courageous move.
It was a first step in trying to deal in an “authentic” way with social, religious and political issues in a region torn by war in Iraq and conflict in Israel, he said. “I seriously think that Hollywood is very courageous to have done a film like ‘Syriana’, but has many steps to take before they tell the truth of the Middle East for real,” Waked told Reuters in an interview.
The film is based loosely on the book “See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War Against Terrorism” by Robert Baer, a former CIA officer with Middle East experience. It stars the U.S. actor George Clooney, who was also involved in production through his company Section Eight.
The film comes at a time when Steven Spielberg has also tried to tackle an emotive political subject for the Middle East in “Munich” — a film about Israel’s reprisals for the killing of 11 of its athletes who were taken hostage by Palestinian guerrillas at the 1972 Olympics.
MALICIOUS SYSTEM
It was only after reading the script for “Syriana” and meeting director Stephen Gaghan that Waked decided to accept the part, because he said he felt the result would be “authentic.” “I’ve turned down an offer before to do a terrorist in a film because ... it just didn’t sound convincing. It sounded like there was an agenda to make the Arabs look like assholes.”
“The one thing that really mattered for me is how the Arabs are portrayed. Are we just terrorists in the film or not?” Waked, who has appeared in 13 films, said the presence in the film of an Arab character who is striving for reform helped to persuade him to take the role.
He said he was attracted to the way the film explored the lives and motivations of its diverse collection of characters, including a suicide bomber and oil industry employees. “Stephen (Gaghan) is trying to show how humans are victims of the system. The human being is a victim of the system and the system is malicious,” he said.
But he said he doubted the film’s delicate treatment of difficult issues would be replicated soon in equally prickly subject matter not involving Iraq or the September 11 attacks. “I think there will be more films (about the Middle East) and I hope they will become more intelligent,” he said. “But it’s 9/11 and it’s Iraq. This is not the problem. The problem is ‘Israel versus the Arabs and Arabs versus Israel...’ “That is the problem of the Middle East and that is what I do not expect to be on film, at least in America”.