Adding Fuel to the Fire

Firestarter: CIA agent Bob Barnes (George Clooney) in Syriana. Courtesy Warner Bros.

Syriana might be the least crowd-pleasing George Clooney movie since, well, the last George Clooney movie. Like the actor-director’s admirable Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana (which Clooney co-produced) trusts its audience to be well versed in the subject matter — in this instance, the geopolitics surrounding the oil industry. Or at least as it’s portrayed in left-liberal organs like The Nation, which is to say, corrupt, criminal and murderous. Dick Cheney and Christopher Hitchens — have I got a date movie for you!

Like other recent big-picture movies (Traffic, Crash), Syriana folds a collection of interlocking stories around a single theme, illustrating just how deeply entwined our lives are. First-time director Stephen Gaghan (who wrote Traffic) uses the structure to make the somewhat simplistic point that American greed breeds Middle East terrorism.

Inspired by a memoir by ex-CIA operative Robert Baer, Syriana deals with the merger of two fictional American oil companies, Connex and Killen. (The prefix of each company’s name bluntly suggests what other businesses they’re in.) This merger involves a vast network of lawyers and spies, government officials and emirs. The principal players include world-weary CIA operative Bob Barnes (a heavy, bearded Clooney); Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer), a patrician lawyer in Connex’s back pocket; Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), the young attorney hired to perform due diligence on the merger; energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon); the two princes of an unnamed Persian Gulf nation, one of whom has drawn the ire of Connex and the U.S. government by selling natural gas rights to China; and a Pakistani oil worker (Mazhar Munir), whose recent firing and growing disaffection lead him to become a suicide bomber.

The merger is the product of many dirty deals, much mendacity and a general disregard for human life. Barnes, who opens the film by blowing up a pair of arms dealers, is a patsy; he later suffers through one of the most gruesome torture scenes since Reservoir Dogs. Meanwhile, Woodman exploits the accidental death of his son as leverage in his negotiations with the more progressive of the two princes.

Lines in the sand: Energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) confronts Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Alexander Siddig) in Syriana. Courtesy Warner Bros.

“I don’t know who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy,” whispered an exasperated audience member at the screening I attended. That’s precisely Gaghan’s point. Syriana portrays a toxic soup of humanity, one in which loyalties and affection shift minute to minute. Gaghan’s suggestion is that we’re all complicit — every time we turn on a light or gas up our cars. As one reprobate politician explains to Holiday, “Corruption is what keeps us safe and warm.”

Syriana is a laudable, ambitious film, but it also suffers from that ambition. It moves too breathlessly, never settling down long enough with one character or plotline. Gaghan assumes viewers have a sophisticated level of knowledge and stops only rarely to explain references, locations or even backstory; the effect is somewhat like having an issue of Foreign Affairs speed-read to you.

“We’re talking world-historical events,” Woodman tells his wife at one point. As a result, the film gives short shrift to individual human beings. That’s unfortunate, because these are intriguing personalities, and allowing us to get more intimate with them would have given a greater resonance to Gaghan’s thesis. Like the original British show on which Traffic was based, Syriana would have benefited from a more judicious pace — like an eight-hour television series. In two extremely dense hours, those complex themes seem too strategic, and too often, Gaghan manipulates his characters like chess pieces. Even so, Gaghan enlivens the movie with some traditional thriller elements; the film manages to create suspense almost in spite of itself.

It will be interesting to see how Syriana plays out in the real world. While the film is too earnest and impenetrable to grab a very large audience, there’s no doubt it will capture the attention of pundits on either end of the political spectrum. Certainly, its very existence reflects a political energy not felt in Hollywood in a very long time.

Syriana opens Nov. 23 in Toronto, and Dec. 9 across Canada.

Jason McBride is a Toronto-based writer and editor.