Review: Syriana

When John Locke finished watching that first Dharma Orientation film in the second season of Lost, his immediate reaction was both emphatic and understandable: "We're gonna need to watch that again!" I suspect that many of the people who've ventured into the complex and dense world of Syriana may have come away with that same feeling. (I know that my wife and I both remarked on it!)

At its heart, Syriana is about the oil business. As such, the film focuses on a Middle Eastern region that's embroiled in a big, controversial oil deal, an American business analyst (Matt Damon) who becomes tangled up in the ambitions of one of the region's princes, a past-his-prime CIA operative (George Clooney) tasked with assassinating that same prince in order to further an American agenda for the area, a high powered law firm associate (Jeffrey Wright) who's supposed to investigate the aforementioned deal and uncover just the right amount of dirt to appease the Department of Justice's concerns about any malfeasance surrounding it, and a Pakastani father and son who lose their migrant jobs as a result of the transaction. And to be honest, that's really only skimming the surface in terms of the many intertwined plot threads to be found within the two hours of entertainment that Syriana provides.

Like Babel a year or two after it, this ensemble piece thrusts the viewer right into the thick of things with little or nothing in the way of a guidebook. You are, quite literally, expected to figure it out as you go along. And I don't mind that sort of approach at all, as long as it pays off in the end. In my opinion, Syriana does just that. The pieces do all come together, although certainly there's a desire at the end to watch it all over again, in order to make sense of many of the earlier scenes.

With all of the balls that the story has to keep in the air simultaneously, it still manages to deliver some memorable - and powerful - lines. When Wright's lawyer character brings his first hint of a bribe to a government official, the other's reaction is to launch into a diatribe against the naivete of the lawyer's outlook:

"We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it! Corruption is our protection! Corruption keeps us safe and warm! Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets! Corruption is why we win!"

Thousands of miles away, Damon has lost one of his two young sons due to an electrical malfunction within a swimming pool owned and operated by the family of Prince Nasir (played by Alexander Siddig, familiar to fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as Dr Bashir) and as a result his firm has been awarded a seventy five million dollar real estate deal by the Prince. Faced with that news, Damon responds in deadpan fashion with, "Great! That's great! How much for my other kid?"

An eerie scene later in the film shows Damon's marriage beginning to disintegrate, as his wife (Amanda Peet) continues to grieve for their lost child while the analyst seems to have moved on. The surviving son plays in a fountain - echoing the watery death of his older sibling - while his parents argue on a nearby park bench. During that scene, there's a second child shown to be playing with the son, but he's only seen from one perspective and not the other. Perhaps it was a simple case of coincidental casting, but it very much looked to me like the other boy was the dead son, and that only Damon could see him (not the wife). One possible interpretation of this scene, of course, is that Damon's character is still mourning the loss in his own way, despite what his wife thinks. Or maybe it was nothing at all.

The tale of the young Pakastani (Mazhar Munir), whose employment, along with that of his father, was cut short by the impending oil acquisition, is probably the most moving in the film. He's easy prey for a Muslim terrorist cell, who first appeal to him on religious grounds before filling his head with thoughts of martydom. The script thankfully casts him in a positive light throughout, bucking against the current trend to paint such characters as ignorant, hateful or alien. And really, as Syriana clearly shows, he ends up in the only other booming business in the region besides oil, and the link between the two is pretty conclusively drawn. The videos made by the martyrs-to-be are particularly chilling and serve very well to remind us that these are simply young men who've been lead astray by forces every bit as compelling and destructive as drugs and crime are in our environment.

A powerful case is made, throughout the film, for why American interests may talk about wanting democracy and cultural advancement in the Middle East, but their actions speak louder than words. After all, it's much easier to suck the resources out of a mostly-ignorant region than it ever would be to do so if that region had invested in building up its infrastructure and educating its people.

All of the acting in Syriana is first-rate, and with a budget as small as I suspect that it was for this movie, that's an impressive feat. William Hurt provides a couple of outstanding cameos, and Chris Cooper threatens to steal every scene that he's in (as usual). He kills with the line, "I'd be real careful. You dig a six foot hole, and you'll find three bodies. But you dig twelve, and maybe you'll find forty." Who can hear that terrific pronouncement and not be reminded of Sherrif Sam Deeds, in Lone Star? Not me, that's for sure!

Syriana is a great movie that rewards you for paying attention, and for figuring out what another film might've spoon fed to you instead. I tried to think of some aspect of the production that didn't work for me, but came up empty. It's just strong from start to finish.

Rating: ****