Syriana is an interesting and complex film. I spent most of the first half of the movie going "now who does this guy work for again?" which, I think, is part of the point and the appeal of the film. In the end, it is clear the oil industry and politicians and financial advisors get entangled in various ways to influence events in the middle east, but it’s not a simplistic "Oil=War" equation. The movie certainly makes it clear that U.S. foreign policy is dictated by economic incenctives, not the least of which conecerns oil, but it takes jabs at capitalism more generally, as well as religious rule in the Middle East, and U.S. foriegn polict for the last several decades, using heart-wrenching personal tragedies to personalize an abstract conflict.
This film tries to sketch out not a conspiracy theory, but the lines of influence in global capital and how entrenched these influences are in policy decisions. It also depicts the genesis of a couple of suicide bombers, who seem so innocent and likeable through most of the film. They become not mindless evildoers, but small parts of a larger machine created in part by the U.S. (the weapon they use in the end was provided inderectly by a CIA operative), and in part by religous ideologues. Even the religious zealotry is informed, in part, by economic policies.
As far as performances, George Clooney plays this role pretty subtly. He barely speaks, seeming like a hardened, almost beaten down operative, as if he’s seen and done too much and can no longer deal effectively with daily life, such as his family. He is more at home in Lebanon than in the U.S., and will do anything to escape the threat of a desk job. Matt Damon is, well, Matt Damon, as a partner in a financial firm/husband/father whose child dies. I think Jeffrey Wright, who plays corporate attorney Bennett Holiday, does a fine job of holding a lot of the film together. He plays the part quietly, with a constant look of restrained disgust, even as he moves to increase his own position by making paving the way for a huge coroporate merger, covering up some wrong-doing, sacrificing a few people to the government, and basically playing the power game from a seemingly weak position.
I will admit I didn’t know much about the film walking in, beyond Clooney and Damon, and that it was about oil and power. I found myself comparing it to Traffic, so I am not surprised to learn on checking imdb just now that the writer/director won the Best Screenplay Academy Award for Traffic. I kept wishing it had the color-coding cinematography Soderbergh used, but in the end I think one is supposed to take away impressions, vague ideas that incomprehensibly big and complex things were happening and that no event had a single cause.
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