Syriana (2005)
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/scope 128m
Director: Stephen Gaghan
Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, William Hurt, Christopher Plummer
Synopsis:
The interests of the CIA, an Economic Adviser, a vast oil and gas conglomerate, precarious migrant Muslim workers and the local royal family converge on an oil-rich middle eastern state.
Review:
From the opening shots of workers anxiously waiting to board buses, only for some of them to be turned brusquely away, this is a movie set firmly in the post-9/11 era. It analyses comprehensively and without bias the current political and economic situation in the Persian Gulf, while maintaining a fictional exterior. Even Clooney plays a compromised figure who is tortured then tossed aside, but who assays a Parallax View-style solo bid for justice. Its piecemeal, kaleidoscope structure may prove an irritation and is initially disorienting, but although narrative momentum is dissipated this may in the end be a good thing in that it stops the film being an ordinary political thriller and more a case study or exposé. The acting is first-rate and the overall effect is far more frightening than, say, the grandstanding indictment of state power in Enemy of the State.
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/scope 128m
Director: Stephen Gaghan
Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, William Hurt, Christopher Plummer
Synopsis:
The interests of the CIA, an Economic Adviser, a vast oil and gas conglomerate, precarious migrant Muslim workers and the local royal family converge on an oil-rich middle eastern state.
Review:
From the opening shots of workers anxiously waiting to board buses, only for some of them to be turned brusquely away, this is a movie set firmly in the post-9/11 era. It analyses comprehensively and without bias the current political and economic situation in the Persian Gulf, while maintaining a fictional exterior. Even Clooney plays a compromised figure who is tortured then tossed aside, but who assays a Parallax View-style solo bid for justice. Its piecemeal, kaleidoscope structure may prove an irritation and is initially disorienting, but although narrative momentum is dissipated this may in the end be a good thing in that it stops the film being an ordinary political thriller and more a case study or exposé. The acting is first-rate and the overall effect is far more frightening than, say, the grandstanding indictment of state power in Enemy of the State.
Country: US
Technical: Technicolor/scope 128m
Director: Stephen Gaghan
Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, William Hurt, Christopher Plummer
Synopsis:
The interests of the CIA, an Economic Adviser, a vast oil and gas conglomerate, precarious migrant Muslim workers and the local royal family converge on an oil-rich middle eastern state.
Review:
From the opening shots of workers anxiously waiting to board buses, only for some of them to be turned brusquely away, this is a movie set firmly in the post-9/11 era. It analyses comprehensively and without bias the current political and economic situation in the Persian Gulf, while maintaining a fictional exterior. Even Clooney plays a compromised figure who is tortured then tossed aside, but who assays a Parallax View-style solo bid for justice. Its piecemeal, kaleidoscope structure may prove an irritation and is initially disorienting, but although narrative momentum is dissipated this may in the end be a good thing in that it stops the film being an ordinary political thriller and more a case study or exposé. The acting is first-rate and the overall effect is far more frightening than, say, the grandstanding indictment of state power in Enemy of the State.