Syriana

Plot synopsis:
U.S. energy giant Connex is losing control of key Middle East oil fields in a kingdom ruled by the al-Subaai family. The emirate's foreign minister, Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig), has granted natural gas drilling rights to a Chinese company, greatly upsetting the U.S. oil industry and government. To compensate for its decreased production capacity, Connex initiates a shady merger with Killen, a smaller oil company that recently won the drilling rights to key petroleum fields in Kazakhstan. Connex-Killen ranks as the world's twenty-third largest economy, and antitrust regulators at the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) have misgivings. A Washington, D.C.-based law firm headed by Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer) is hired to smooth the way for the merger. Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) is assigned to promote the impression of due diligence to the DOJ, deflecting any allegations of corruption.
=== Emir storyline ===
Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) is an energy analyst based in Geneva, Switzerland. Woodman's supervisor directs him to attend a private party hosted by the emir at his estate in Marbella, Spain, to offer his company's services. The emir's illness during the party prevents Woodman from speaking directly with him while, at the same time, the emir's younger son, Prince Meshal Al-Subaai (Akbar Kurtha), shows the estate's many rooms and areas to Chinese oil executives via remote-controlled cameras. No one notices that a crack in one of the swimming pool area's underwater lights has electrified the water. Just as Woodman and all the other guests are brought to the pool area, Woodman's son jumps into the pool and is electrocuted.
In reparation and out of sympathy for the loss of his son, Prince Nasir, the emir's older son, grants Woodman's company oil interests worth US$75 million, and Woodman, though initially insulted by the offer, gradually becomes his economic advisor. Prince Nasir is dedicated to the idea of progressive reform and understands that oil dependency is not sustainable in the long term; Nasir wants to utilize his nation's oil profits to diversify the economy and introduce democratic reforms, in sharp contrast to his father's repressive government, which has been supported by American interests. His father, at the urging of the American government, names the younger Meshal (who has gained the favor of Whiting) as his successor, causing Nasir to attempt a coup.
=== Assassination storyline ===
Bob Barnes (George Clooney) is a veteran Operations Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) trying to stop illegal arms trafficking in the Middle East. While on assignment in Tehran, Iran, to kill two arms dealers, Barnes notices that one of two anti-aircraft missiles (actually the Stinger MANPADS) intended to participate in an explosion was diverted to an Egyptian (Amr Waked), while the other explodes and kills the two arms dealers, who are later also revealed to be "Iranian Intelligence agents." Barnes makes his superiors nervous by writing memos about the missile theft and is subsequently reassigned to a desk job. However, unaccustomed to the political discretion required, he quickly embarrasses the wrong people by speaking his mind and is sent back to the field with the assignment of assassinating Prince Nasir, whom the CIA identifies as being the financier behind the Egyptian's acquisition of the missile. Prior to his reassignment, Barnes confides in his ex-CIA agent friend, Stan Goff (William Hurt), that he will return to Lebanon. Goff advises him to clear his presence with Hezbollah so they know he is not acting against them. Barnes travels to Lebanon, obtains safe passage from a Hezbollah leader, and hires a mercenary named Mussawi (Mark Strong) to help kidnap and murder Nasir. But Mussawi has become an Iranian agent and has Barnes abducted. Mussawi tortures Barnes and prepares to behead him. Just before he is about to cut off Barnes' head, the Hezbollah leader arrives and stops him.
When the CIA learns that Mussawi plans to broadcast the agency's intention to kill Nasir, they set Barnes up as a scapegoat, portraying him as a rogue agent. Barnes's boss, Terry George, worries that Barnes might talk about the Nasir assassination plan, about the possibility that Nasir's coup might have a greater likelihood of success, and that killing Nasir with an MQ-1 Predator drone would make it obvious as an American-backed assassination. He has Barnes's passports revoked, locks him out of his computer at work, and initiates an investigation of him. Barnes, however, learns from Goff that Whiting, working on behalf of a group of businessmen calling themselves The Committee to Liberate Iran, is responsible for Barnes's blackballing and the assassination job, and threatens him and his family unless he halts the investigation and releases Barnes's passports.
After Barnes eventually learns why he was portrayed as a rogue agent, he returns to the Middle East and approaches Prince Nasir's convoy to warn him of the assassination plan. As he arrives, a guided bomb from a circling Predator drone strikes the automobile of Nasir and his family, killing them instantly. Woodman, having earlier offered his seat in Nasir's car to members of his family, survives the missile strike and goes home to his wife and son.
=== Wasim storyline ===
Pakistani migrant workers Saleem Ahmed Khan (Shahid Ahmed) and his son Wasim (Mazhar Munir) board a bus to go to work at a Connex refinery, only to discover that they have been laid off due to a Chinese company outbidding Connex for the rights to run the facility. Since the company had provided food and lodging, the workers face the threat of poverty and deportation due to their unemployed status. Wasim desperately searches for work but is refused because he doesn't speak Arabic. Wasim and his friend join an Islamic school to learn Arabic in order to improve their employment prospects. While playing soccer, they meet a charismatic Islamic fundamentalist cleric—the same man who earlier acquired Bob Barnes' anti-aircraft missile in Tehran—who eventually leads them to execute a suicide attack on a Connex-Killen LNG tanker using a shaped-charge explosive from the missing Tehran missile.
=== Merger storyline ===
Bennett Holiday meets with Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer), who is convinced that Killen bribed someone to get the drilling rights in Kazakhstan. While investigating Connex-Killen's records, Holiday discovers a wire transfer of funds that leads back to a transaction between Texas oilman and Killen Co. colleague Danny Dalton (Tim Blake Nelson) and Kazakh officials. Holiday tells Connex-Killen of his discovery, and they pretend not to have known about it. Holiday advises Dalton that he will likely be charged with corruption in order to serve as a "body" to get the DOJ off the back of the rest of Connex-Killen; Dalton responds with a fervent defense of how corruption is simply the way of competition and how America "wins" against the rest of the corrupt world. U.S. Attorney Donald Farish III (David Clennon) then strong-arms Holiday into giving the DOJ information about illegal activities he has discovered. Holiday gives up Dalton, but Farish says this is not enough. Holiday meets with the CEO of Killen Oil, Jimmy Pope (Chris Cooper), and informs him that the DOJ needs a second body in order to drop the investigation. Pope asks Holiday whether a person at Holiday's firm above him would be sufficient as the additional body. Holiday acknowledges that if the name were big enough, the DOJ would stop the investigation and allow the merger.
Holiday is brought by his colleague and mentor Sydney Hewitt (Nicky Henson) to meet with the Chairman & CEO of Connex Oil, Leland "Lee" Janus (Peter Gerety). In a surprise move, Holiday reveals an under-the-table deal that Hewitt made while the Connex-Killen merger was being processed. Holiday has given Hewitt to the DOJ as the second body, thereby protecting the rest of Connex-Killen. Janus is able to accept the "Oil Industry Man of the Year" award with a load taken off his shoulders. Throughout the film, Holiday has angrily crossed paths with his alcoholic father Bennett Sr.; at the movie's end when the merger has been completed, Bennett Jr. brings his father into his house.
=== Father–son storylines ===
The final Holiday family scene serves to underscore the fact that every storyline here is built around major father–son relationships: Woodman returns home to embrace his surviving younger son following the killing of Prince Nasir, whose own father, the Emir, had rejected him. Wasim hugs and waves farewell to his totally unsuspecting father before embarking on his suicidal terrorist mission. And Bob Barnes, collateral damage in the Nasir assassination, leaves behind his only child, the high school senior who had earlier called both him and his CIA-employed mother "professional liars."

Tags: thought-provoking, violence, suspenseful, murder, flashback

Review:
Stephen Gaghan is a good writer, and he provides a nice summary of the film's action in its final moments.What emerges from this tangled puzzle is a web of corruption and self-interest, all fueled by the need for oil.
And in the film's most chilling plot strand, we see how the struggle for oil feeds the radical Islam movement in the Middle East, providing young men with a feeling of brotherhood and righteousness in the face of a region they feel has turned its back on them in favor of big business and Western corruption."Syriana" is tense, fast and furious.
Following it can admittedly be somewhat exhausting, but if you pay very close attention to the first hour or so, as each story is introduced and the relationships between characters become clear, the second half of the movie is easier to digest.I disagree with other comments here that the characters aren't developed or that the acting is unimpressive.
THe story of Jeffrey Wright, the government official investigating the merger, George Clooney, the CIA operative with missions with no apparent goal, the Arab Emir from an unnamed oil producing country, and his two sons each wanting to take over his reign, the industry analyst (Matt Damon) who will use any situation to advance his firm, and the young, broke angry Arab youth who look for meaning in life and find it in the most dangerous way.Syriana is not a left wing movie, it is surprising a-political.
It does not answer any questions because I believe that Gaghan is trying to show that no-one is really in charge and that no-one really knows what is going on.The acting is near perfect from everyone in the cast, including a small, two scene brilliant cameo by William Hurt and Oscar worthy work from Clooney and Alexander Siddig as the frustrated Arab prince.This is an important film and it is not to be missed.
In a way, Mr. Baer's novel as well as the film seems to be reaffirming Niccolo Machiavelli's "The ends justify the means"Stephen Gaghan's first major directorial job presents the story in multiple settings running at the same time, which, for a great majority of the public will prove disorienting.
Stephen Gaghan shows he can do well working with Mr. Baer's material and made an interesting film that while it will irritate some viewers, on the whole he had the right idea in the way to tell this story..
Each sector--regulators, "intelligence", lobbyists, grease-the-wheel-ers and cogs-in-the-wheel-ers, in the network of greed, idealism, self-interest, sophistication and naiveté, is represented by a different character followed through the movie to bring them together, directly or indirectly, into the climax.This technique to coordinate a huge ensemble of captivating character actors woven tightly together in a complex story is helped enormously by Robert Elswit's ever-moving camera shots as visually and sound edited by Tim Squyres, who had some experience with overlapping dialog and movement in a more literal upstairs/downstairs on Robert Altman's "Gosford Park." Alexandre Desplat's music adds to the tense mood.The variegation that Gaghan presents is almost staggering, even more ethically complicated than a Graham Greene Cold War noir.
That so many of the oil and gas executives have Texas accents (superb Chris Cooper, Tim Blake Nelson, Robert Foxworth) does seem to say that the decades of business and political corruption there, as documented in Robert Caro's biography of LBJ, have simply been extended to a global scale.The film is also unusual in focusing on the role of lawyers negotiating the deals between companies and governments.
We see before our eyes he goes from, as his mentor says, "a sheep into a lion." Most films have prosecutors like David Clennon's U.S. attorney as a hero against corruption, instead of being chillingly dismissed as "trust fund lawyers." But the script is so full of such epigrams, like "In this town, you're only innocent until you're investigated," that one character calls another on issuing them too brightly.While from the beginning I couldn't quite follow all the machinations around George Clooney's character, he is wonderful at transforming from his usual Cary Grant suave to harried, dedicated, mid-level bureaucrat who literally won't toe the Company line in a dangerous hierarchy that's shown to be a bit more competent than in real life, that reminded me both in the gut and guts of Russell Crowe's Wigand in the tobacco wars in "The Insider." It recalls how benign corrupt spooks looked in their personal lives, as there's much conversation here about houses, cars and college tuition.
Indirectly, the film implicitly shows the dangers to Valerie Plame from her outing as a CIA operative, as families and personal connections are constantly used as threats and bargaining chips.Significantly, there is not a single mention amidst all these Mideast chicaneries, plots and plans of the Zionist entity, proving that pro or anti-Israel policies are smoke screens around the main draw -- oil.Movie-wise, these characters seem a lot like the gangsters and their conseglieres in "The Godfather" carving up Cuba and drug rights, let alone Gordon Gekko extolling "Greed is good" as the ultimate ideology, and fits right in with this year's other geo-political thrillers "The Constant Gardener" and "Lord of War," and those weren't even about natural resources.
Directed and written by Stephen Gaghan (Screenplay for Traffic 2000), the script for Syriana shows not only a smart liberal-approached storyline, but also how much the American and Arabian lives becomes juxtaposed by oil politics.
Based on the non-fiction book "See No Evil" by Robert Baer, Syriana takes its viewer step by step through the birth and processes of terrorism; and tears at the roots from where all violence and corruption derives.The movie starts with the introduction of a character, Bob (George Clooney), an American CIA agent who works in the Middle East for years witnessing the destruction of social injustice.
Bryan (Matt Damon) struggling to survive in America's capitalistic society thrives to introduce business opportunities in the Middle East; but before completing any deals with reformer and leader, Prince Nasir, all the characters, including a young Arabic man suffering from American politics and social injustices, end up experiencing sacrifices beyond comprehensible.
He said that most of the film was based on his or Bob's actual experiences.So what do we have....Oil, big oil, oil executives, oil analysts, oil geography, oil politics, big time oil power brokers, CIA, Islamic terrorists, Middle East culture....It's all there.
Having seen the trailer, and being a thriller-lover, I expected to see first of all a fast moving, breath catching movie, which wisely dips in global policy-making and the relation between oil, power and corruption, from a fresh angle.
I stuck with it thinking the plot would gradually develop, and all the threads would come together; well I waited and waited and it just got more and more confusing, so after an hour or so, I was still not really sure what it was all about.As far as being an Oscar nomination for best screenplay - thats amazing - the screenplay is the foundation of a movie, on which everything else is built, so its hard to see how this could have been viewed as being in the top 4 or 5 scripts of 2005.
I could not understand how George Clooney received an acting award for the film since he was hardly involved, at least in the first half of the movie.
It saddens me to think that most of you will believe the other 90% of comments that give this movie a high rating and will watch, but I'm sure some of you will agree with me and wish you hadn't.Oh yea, and can someone please tell me what the crap Syriana even means!!???.
Though Babel and Constant Gardner are of the same genre, and received slightly higher marks on IMDb - I believe this to be a much better movie.The story is a clinic on the competing interests of the two empires of big business profits, and the absolute control of government deciding what will and will not happen within it's sphere of power.
...........................................................from Pasto,Colombia...Via: L.A. CA., CALI, COLOMBIA....and ORLANDO, FL Syriana, certainly supremely somber and dark, both in focus and in execution, with a cast replete with A-Listers like George Clooney (also listed as one of the executive producers), Matt Damon, Chris Cooper, Christopher Plummer and Amanda Peet, had a budget of 50 million dollars....All for the purpose of presenting a striking vision of the troubled state of the world in which we live.To dig a little deeper regarding Syriana, a film nominated for several Oscars (which were quite well deserved, in my opinion) is the kind of psychological-political thriller where you, the spectator, is forced to put your brain into hyper drive in every scene, every line from the movie, from start to its final seconds....If you do not want to end up with gaps in the arc of the story, you'd best not let down your mental guard, even for the briefest of moments!
Director Stephen Gahagan and co-star/producer George Clooney aim to tell a story about the business of oil in the contemporary world,using much the same brand of sort of dizzying,low-fi noise and imagery as was used in Gahagan's 2000 Traffic.The stories of Bob Barnes(Clooney,about twenty pounds overweight and scraggly),a CIA vet in the Middle East who slowly senses that his government is quietly guiding situations in the region to befit an upcoming blockbuster petroleum deal,Bryan Woodman(MAtt Damon,still looks about fifteen),a business analyst whose family endures tragedy at the palatial home of a Arab emir, a corporate lawyer named Bennett Holiday(Jeffrey Wright,becoming a solid chameleon-like actor)who may or may not have moral qualm and some sway over the fate of said oil deal,and the lives of two ground-level Islamic national petroleum workers who are laid off in the acquisition(I do not recall their names or the actors who played them,but they were quite effective and sympathetic),are the focal points and points of view at which the movie runs.
As a viewing experience,I can honestly I've had better experiences,but I appreciated the message and the intelligence this movie provides.Good,almost passing performances by a supporting cast that includes(but is not limited to)Amanda Peet(As Damon's distressed wife),Peter Gerety(as the top dog in the oil corporate merger),Chris Cooper(as one of the CEOs,a brash and impatient businessman.Effective!),Alexander Siddig(as a reform-minded prince and apparent first-in-line heir to the throne),Christopher Plummer(as Wright's immediate boss) and Tim Blake Nelson(as an out-of-control exec who sets the tone for the movie's moral) frame this film well.
With all that being said, writer-director Steven Gaghanhas made one of the most engrossing and complex films you will see at your multiplex.By far one of the most ambitious Hollywood movies of the year, Gaghan has created a bold, intelligent, and rewarding movie that says something politically and equally profoundly.With the hyper-link structure that resembles the narrative of "Traffic",( which Gaghan also wrote the script for and Steven Soderbergh directed superbly).
If you want to see a movie where terrorists are kinda good guys, American CIA bombs everything that doesn't agree with our opinions, all capitalists are corrupt, and you like to see anything resembling a storyboard advancement accompanied by a death, have at.
Way too many moving parts, choppy subplots, characters and multiple locations which instead of coming together as the movie progressed just remained random and confusing feeling.Described as a "riveting political thriller about the state of the oil industry in the hands of those personally involved and affected by it." I'm just gong to say it, this was boring as hell.The script is disjointed, complicated, and confusing.
The film is something like a mosaic; it doesn't really matter if every single detail doesn't attain complete clarity as long as we are able to pull back and focus our eyes on the big picture Gaghan shows us.There's not much point in trying to relate the fine points of the complex plot here.
Suffice it to say that the film is filled with vivid scenes and memorable moments, as well as outstanding performances by George Clooney, Matt Damon, Christopher Plummer, Chris Cooper, Amanda Peet, Kayvan Novak, Amr Waked and many others.By plunging headlong into the most timely and important issue of our time - the violent clash between Western secularism and Muslim extremism - "Syriana" certainly establishes itself as one of the bravest and best movies of 2005.
Intriguingly, all three characters have been given more personal profiles - Barnes has a college-age son with whom he feels estranged, Woodman goes through the loss of a child, and Holiday has a resentful alcoholic father - but none of these dimensions are explored with any depth.Gaghan has certainly assembled an extensive cast, and there are solid contributions from Alexander Siddig as the reform-minded Prince Nasir Al-Subaai, Chris Cooper as one of the oil company CEOs, Christopher Plummer as Holiday's corrupt boss, Jayne Atkinson as the poker-faced CIA division chief, and Amanda Peet as Woodman's inconsolable wife.
Instead, director Stephen Gaghan (who also wrote the very good Havoc now on DVD), puts up on the big screen maybe one of the most complex and interesting stories that the multiplexes have seen in some time.
Clooney and Damon in particular give maybe the best performances of their careers and their supporting cast is no less stellar.But like reading a Tom Clancy novel, this adaptation of a Robert Baer book (See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism) jumps from country to country and storyline to storyline with head turning swiftness where the only way to understand what is probably one of the best movies of the year is to get out of your seat at the end of the film, go back to the box office and buy another ticket to see it all again.www.robertsreviews.com.
Its interweaving stories in many locations force us to try and make sense of an international tragedy facing our planet in what President Bush has described as the 'addiction to oil'.Using facts from a work of non-fiction, 'See No Evil', Syriana starts in Iran with George Clooney almost losing control over the movement of some armaments (although not essential, a mental map of the world and some familiarity with relevant world affairs will greatly enhance enjoyment of this movie).
Whatever your politics or beliefs, Syriana is sure to cast doubt on them, but in not taking sides it makes us aware of aspects we might not otherwise have considered.Minutely researched and executed, the film poses stark questions that are too uncomfortable generally to even ask, and then only offers inescapable geographical facts or hard truths that politicians might genuinely want to shield us from.
And what I'd like to know is if we keep embargoing them on energy, then someday soon are we going to get a nice, secular, pro-Western, pro-business government?" Agent Clooney, from hard experience, tries to disabuse her of such wishful thinking but is dexterously sidelined in favour of People Who Have Answers.Syriana is a venture of Participant Productions, a company that aims to make socially relevant films, which also have broad appeal, and it is the most accomplished offering of the company to date.
I found myself looking at my watch a good five or six times, just wondering when this would end.The whole thing feels like it was written by the head of BP or Shell, a man who knows the oil business upside-down, inside-out, but couldn't write a decent film with a gun at his head.
But as I got tangled within the story, there were points in the movie where I couldn't tell a person whats going on yet oddly enough, I never felt lost.In a departure from his usual, cocky roles, George Clooney plays Bob Barnes, a CIA operative who is trying to stop the Persian prince (played by Alexander Siddig) yet doesn't know he is being used.
Of all performances, I think Wright delivers one of the best, this side of Clooney's performance.All in all, politics aside, Syriana contains GREAT film-making and acting all around.
Above all, this a movie about the chilling ambiance of international oil politics and corporate criminality.George Clooney headlines the film, and he has an important role, but it's intermittent.
That said, the other threads in the film I found very interesting and intriguing; indeed, the thread about the brothers, while their characters may have seemed a bit too sharply drawn, reveals possible differences in how oil revenues might be apportioned and suggest a more equitable energy policy in the world.The story is also told from the point of view of an oil analyst named Bryan Woodman (a typically accomplished Matt Damon) and the toll his close ties to the industry take on his ostensibly objective TV analysis.
But those who have the patience and will to keep watching this movie will be rewarded with a thought provoking and effective movie that will leave you thinking afterward.Best thing about this movie is that it basically follows four different plot lines and characters but it really doesn't feel like four separate and different stories at all.
It's that none of these stories is told in a sufficiently interesting way to make you want to figure out the connections between the various threads.I expected "Syriana" to be like "Munich," another recent film that treated Middle Eastern politics in an intelligent way.
The ending sequence is nicely suspenseful, and ties some of the disparate plot lines together, but the movie takes much too long to get there.The worst (that is, the most boring) of the four story lines is the one where Jeffrey Wright plays a lawyer investigating possible corruption in an American oil company merger.
For those going to see "Syriana" know this: it is a heavily liberal film that makes capitalist Americans look like pigs, but also many other peoples too.