Syriana

This collaboration between George Clooney and writer/director Stephen Gaghan is a close cousin of Fernando Meilles’ Constant Gardener with focus shifted from pharmaceuticals to the more obvious petroleum. Cementing the relationship is that neither fits the Hollywood mold (which, despite their shared anti-corporate message, predecessors like Silkwood and Erin Brockovich very much do).

Syriana follows veteran CIA Middle East operative Bob Barnes (Clooney) and financial wizard Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) as they follow perpendicular roads to the opening of a massive new facility in a corrupt Persian Gulf emirate. Mirroring the American pair are a poor Pakistani teen (Mazhar Munir) attempting to work in the Emirate and Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig, in his first big post-Star Trek: Deep Space Nine role), heir apparent and determined to reshape his country as more than just free-spending oil barrons.

Christopher Plummer plays the master chef, happy to cut and stir behind the scenes, with Jeffrey Wright (very different from his performance in Angels in America) excellent as his sous chef; both are partners at a powerful DC law firm, working to smooth approval of a merger between Chris Cooper’s up and coming family business with the traditional Big Oil corporation run by Peter Gerety (Homicide: Life on the Streets, The Wire).

Other noteworthy performers are a very subdued Amanda Peet as Damon’s wife; the visibly aging David Clennon, an Assistant US Attorney General investigating the merger, and William Hurt, ex-CIA, still connected pal of Barnes; Jane Atkinson, the ruthless head of Barnes’ CIA division; and, Akbar Kurta as Nasir’s slothful brother and rival in succession.

Syriana is based on the allegedly autobiographical book by Robert Baer though Gaghan and Cooney steer clear of that controversy by making the plot unquestionably fiction albeit inspired and informed by the source material. Making his directorial debut after writing the terrific Traffic, Gaghan has clearly learned from Steven Soderberg’s film of his script as we float from perspective to perspective, a bit of plot here and character development there, misdirection and suggestion as prevalent as clear going.

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