Syriana Reviews

This is one of the most naturally constructed films I have ever experienced. It is also extremely realistic in presenting the characters. Stephen Gaghan...why have I not heard of this brilliant filmmaker?

It's a political movie that handle a large portion of U.S government policy overseas, it handle politics surrounding oil companies and terrorism in the middle east, it also tries to show that the U.S government is controlling the entire region, removing and installing whoever they want at all time, and it's based on a non-fiction book called "See No Evil" by Robert Baer. now i haven't read the book and now that I've seen the movie, i'm not going to read it, because it's too complicated, and i'd easily say that this movie didn't handle the materials quite well, because as a motion picture, the main objective would be to simplify and translate it to audience, but it didn't do that as the movie is also too complicated to understand.

It's a story about a CIA agent called Bob Barnes (played by George Clooney) as he get sent to the middle east to employ an assassin to kill an Arabian Prince because as the king there is dying, he have to give his crown to one of his sons, one being the guy who refuses to deal with the Americans and want the oil for his own people called Nasir Al-Subaai (played by Alexander Siddig) whose the one the U.S trying to assassinate and the other would be the spoiled son who got bribed and controlled by the U.S.A, so with so much politics going on and so much policy changes, the mission fails and Bob Barnes gets apprehended, tortured and sent back to the U.S .

The movie handle an enormous amount of politics, it had many people involved in many countries, and it had a lot of references to actual events happened over the years, which makes it exhausting to watch, it's also very Pretentious as it's treat the audience as if they were all familiar with the situations, like we all are history students or something, which means no matter how much the viewer knows about politics, Middle east, oil companies and/or terrorism, you will feel confused at 70% of the time. i literally felt like pausing the movie multiple times just to cursor over to Wikipedia and read about that reference real quick. now, with that being said, here come the major problem with the movie which is being highly encrypted, and not entertaining at all, i mean seriously, if you're going to show me some rich white man in a farm in Texas controlling the situation in the middle east while shooting ducks, you have to at least guide me through it, show me how it's done, don't just refer to it and pretend like we all know about it, because now, it's seems more like a propaganda than a fact, it doesn't mean it's not believable because it's highly believable, but the way it was handled made it suspicious. personally, i love politically charged movies, but this one being too pretentious made it not to my liking.

The movie had a very large cast of good actors, but the problem with that is they're weren't much screen time for anyone, even George Clooney in the main role have few scenes and few lines. the performances were very good for all, but it should be since most of the actors were brought up to say few things and go. Matt Damon brought another good performance along with Jeffrey Wright, Clooney, Chris Cooper and Alexander Siddig. i do give a lot of credits for the casting, because the movie brought Pakistani people to play Pakistani's, Arabs to play Arabs, which is not very Hollywood because movies tend to mix ethnics, races and accents when going to the other side of the world thinking that people wouldn't notice it, but it played carefully with languages, carefully with religious terms and it was deep on many things.

The entertainment falls flat as the movie contained too many short scenes of too many events all happening at the same time, some scenes were as much as 10 to 20 seconds, so you sit there wondering what have you learned from this 20 seconds scene and how is that gonna contribute to the plot and why i'm being updated every 2 minutes about things happening sometimes not even at the same time, why can't they show me the entire thing and then move on to another one, specially the fact being that many of these short scenes involve Jeffrey Wright as an attorney investigating a non-interesting thing about two companies merging together speaking in all legal terms that are too hard to follow as he supposed to show you the corruption within the system, they also tried to slap audience with the fact that the only guy who isn't rich in this one, is the honest upraising attorney who isn't corrupted yet, as they push the fact that he's still living in the Ghetto alone, childless and wifeless.

I know, it sounds like i hated the movie, but i'm not, the movie had a large amount of believability and had very good production value, it was also deep on situations in the middle east, like how foreign workers specially from east Asia are being treated, how easy for someone to exploit them and use them for terrorism purposes, it also showed how most Arabs sitting on the wealth of billion dollars are horrible businessmen that can easily get used or manipulated and it can be an eye-opener on so many other things if the materials was treated properly, not just pushed down our throats, the movie was a bit thrilling and had a good music to it, and was filmed exactly at the locations showing in the movie, which means they hired people from that area, and used actual people in some cases. maybe this is just me nitpicking, but George Clooney Arabic was horrible, i know it's a hard language, but if he was that bad, then alter the scene because it weren't that necessary, i mean he wasn't actually saying words, he was just blurting things that can't be understood, but his performance was good, i don't know if it was that good that he won an Oscar for it, but i guess, the Academy awards are more about appearances than performances and sometimes just about body transformations, furthermore, Alexander Siddig isn't Arabic native as he struggled a lot because he had many lines and not all of them sounded right, but it was decent nonetheless.

Overall, it's too political, even for political movie fans, it also too much and too Pretentious, not very enjoyable but that doesn't make it less valid which is the most important part as the movie can serve as a political overall on the middle east, or political overall on U.S policy overseas, but it needs a understanding of many things to get the movie right, and even then, some references still might sound encrypted, so it's diffidently not for everyone.

I have noticed that this movie doesn't get much love here on Listal and on IMDB but, personally, I thought it was really good. First of all, it was the official coronation of Georges Clooney who finally got his academy award and I think he really deserved the damned thing but I think that the rest of the cast was really good too (Christopher Plummer, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet). Basically, it is one of those hyperlink plots where several stories are more or less intertwined together. You might think it is a tired gimmick by now but I have definitely a weak spot for this kind of stories, especially when they are well written like this one. Furthermore, it deals with politics which I found a fascinating subject and I'm a real sucker for movies dealing with this subject. So, they put all those elements together and it just worked very well and I thought that the whole thing was pretty spellbinding to watch. To conclude, even though it might be not very original, I thought it was a very well made and entertaining flick and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

I think this is a pretty political picture, and like most things political, there is a strong strand of narcissism.

Probably the best thought-out story-thread is the one where George-Clooney-is-Bob-Barnes-who-is-Bob-Baer, and, from a news junkie angle, this would be pretty fantastic.

(I almost read his book one time, and then I realized, what good is this? Do I really want to be a ground soldier in the CIA's war on terror? Hmmm. Not really. Well, where did I leave that shredder...)

But the thing is, this isn't really a story about people, it's a story about pretending you're learning lots of lots of Awesome Shit about the Middle East. (And you want the Arabs to be free, and you just f'ing **know** that Washington's policy of {intervention/non-intervention} was **specifically** designed to thwart Arab freedom...because Washington is Darth Vader, the Arabs are little Ewoks, and no-one has any control over their own destiny, because if they did, you'd be Emperor of Google and have {censored} every fifteen minutes.)

Its value as film & performing art is correspondingly diminished, and it's basically mostly mediocre.

Not least because there are way too many plot-threads and too many characters pretending they're all really awesome and developed, when they've basically all got about two lines apiece, like hobos on the street, sharing some pizza they dug out of the trash, talking about World Events as tho they were f'ing millionaires.

Long story short--who's really more awesome, Kayvan Novak, or Novak Djokovic?

P.S. Matt Damon did a good job with his role too, like he usually does, he really is a pretty good actor. The woman who played his wife also did a good job. And, although at the time I wouldn't have admitted it, I did gain some sense of nerdy pleasure/geeky victory at seeing Alexander Siddig (Julian Basheer!) become an Arab Princeling.

But all that doesn't quite make up for--how much time does Matt get to mourn his dead baby boy, and how much time does time does he spend listening to Julian say, you know--I wouldn't *have had to* lie to get into StarFleet Medical, if only if weren't for the stupid law that America made because of The Oil!!

(And no, it's not a accident that's mostly a story about men, because for there to be more feminine presence--it would have to be **a different kind of story**--.)

But, the thing is, and, yes--omg it's politics!--I'm just not so sure anymore that the Evil Empire is Out To Get the good doctor.

I'm not sure anymore...

{cue for Billy Joel's "Shades Of Grey"}

"Some things were perfectly clear, seen with the vision of youth, No doubts and nothin' to fear, I claimed the corner on truth..."

And anyway, it's a pretty icky movie, and I'm so sure anymore that all that ickiness was necessary to be all artsy and whatevs, as opposed to being important to keep it all nice and narcissist-y.

If you follow.

"And the only people I fear are those who never have doubts."

"The more I find out, the less that I know, there ain't no rainbow shinin' on me--shades of grey are the colors I see!"

{cue for a different song}

"There's trenches dug within our hearts..."

"...but I won't heed the battle call, it puts my back up, it puts my back up against the wall..."

{and back}

"Black and White was so easy for me, but Shades of Grey are the colors I see."

..........

*shrugs* It's true though.

{And I like Natalie Portman, but she disappointed me in "V for Vendetta", and I like Matt Damon, but he disappointed me in "Syriana", and maybe in one or two others, too.... And, it's funny, I don't really like Colin Firth nearly so well, but at least he read the novel, and was even in the 1995 version of it-- look, and see how false and true.... Reverse themselves!}

And: the more time that goes by, the more that I come to despise George Wi--! George Clooney. The more that I come to see him as a despicable phony, and as a really selfish bastard, *who would stop at nothing*, to make himself look good at everybody else's expense! And that's all that he ever does-- the bastard!

And, you know, if I can look at a movie that *Natalie Portman* was in-- "V for Vendetta"-- and say that it's basically just propaganda and not art-- then you can be pretty damn sure that that's also *exactly* what I think of "Good Night, And Good Luck", and "Syriana", and all that drivel and dross like that that he does....

Because fuck knows that George Clooney can't dance, and, to be honest, I've given up waiting for him to try....

(6/10)

When I saw this on the big screen, my first reaction after the lights came on was "I need to see that again!". This is one of those films that keep you on your toes the entire time, and you're constantly asking yourself "What is going on?"
It's not the kind of film that gets under your skin in that you get emotional satiscfaction or a resolution, rather it gets into your brain and settles in a corner and proceeds to bug you.

It tells four stories of people in the oil business, in espionage, in the terror "business", and the legal business, all of them intertwined at some point, and none of the characters are up to good things.

The film has a huge list of characters, so that doesn't make it any easier, but it is definitely an interesting film for those who don't like their films being pre-cut and mashed for easy consumption. I also have to admit that George Clooney has really grown on me. I mean, he was hot all along, and I don't mind watching a few of his earlier films, but hot and brainy is unbeatable :-D.

OK, now that I have place myself squarely in the shallow crowd, you still should have a look at this if you like entertainment with a challenge.

I'm thankful I watched the movie, and didn't read the book. There are a lot of players and schemes going on, and I'm sure I couldn't have kept track of it in the book. In a way this could be considered a gangster film, even if some of the players were well respected governments. But somehow it was able to make nearly all of the characters multifaceted, and complicated, and not exactly "good" or "evil". It was a nice ensemble movie, smart, well shot, filled with "actors' actors" and thought provoking. And with most things based in real life, it didn't get all tied up with a bow at the end. George was good, Oscar-worthy I'm not sure.