Syriana
(dir. Stephen Gaghan)
A beefed-up George Clooney plays a CIA agent worrying his bosses back in Washington with his rogue memo action. Matt Damon's a clean-cut oil consultant slowly getting his hands dirty out in the field. Jeffrey Wright's chasing a paper trail filled with dodgy Texan oil barons all wanting to keep controlling the oil and make sure the petrodollars are coming back to them and not floating off to China or the middle east.
Like Traffic (some of the same team worked on this), Crash, Magnolia etc, this is a film that jumps from one set of characters to another, building a global picture of an amoral industry. It works best as a mood piece, but it's pretty slow, and doesn't quite kick into the level of other studies of corporate corruption like The Insider for example. Still, it's good to see a film actually discussing the oil problem, and getting angry about the madness. Clooney's solid as ever, and the Texan oil cabal guys get some suitably pal-of-Bush style rants.
20th Feb 2006 - Tumblr
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