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Syriana December 12, 2005 |
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Do you remember when the general notion of oil, Earth’s great energy goldmine to man, was romantic and exciting; a veritable dreamscape of riches that any shlub with a shovel and a piece of land could cash in on? The image of poor ranch hand James Dean striking oil on his reservation outside of rich oil baron Rock Hudson’s vast Texas estate in “Giant” remains one of those iconic film moments where the underdog, the mumbly voiced second banana with an impossible crush on the hero’s beautiful eastern wife, wins a brief victory over his successful, good looking boss, thanks to the natural wonder of an oil geyser. Striking oil was always the great, orgasmic, nearly unattainable, somewhat sleazy American Dream (poor one second, bam, rich the next), but then things happened; the gas shortage in the ‘70’s, the bottom falling out in the ‘80’s, the Exxon-Valdez disaster, continual strife in the oil rich Middle East, and the sticky mess that is going on right now, and suddenly the oil biz is the black sheep of all the corrupt, rich world-running industries. So now, instead of sulky James Dean, an American icon if there ever was, dancing around Rock Hudson painted in oil, lording it over his boss like a nerd berating the bully he’s finally found the gumption to punch out, we have “Syriana”, a dense, terribly complicated, somewhat erratic, and quietly disturbing oil drama that covers the entire industry, with one eye on realism, and another on accusation, and nobody is spared. The film runs the gauntlet trying to open unsuspecting hearts and minds to the behind the scenes hand wringing and back stabbing, often literally for life and death stakes, that goes on behind closed doors, from law offices in Washington and corporate head quarters in Texas, to royal stately mansions and dirt poor laborer housing camps in the Middle East, in the multi-billion dollar business of oil contracting and worldwide energy supplying. It’s not a pretty picture, but then again, it hasn’t been for a long time, and now, instead of Dick Cheney and the royal Saudi family as the perceived zeitgeist enemies, we have fictionalized counterparts to use as reference guides, from rich white guys Christopher Plummer and Peter Gerety, on down to famous superstars George Clooney and Matt Damon as partially innocent (partially is key, since nobody in this film is without fault) Americans swept up in the risky game of big money persuasion within the all too blurry line between terrorist influence, governmental involvement, and the fat cats at the top, scratching each other’s backs with immoral claws of cunning and corruption. The vast ensemble cast doesn’t have a specific lead, but top billing goes to Clooney as C.I.A agent Bob Barnes, a Middle East expert who pushes the wrong buttons when an operation he’s involved in goes wrong and a missile winds up in the hands of Iranian terrorists. It’s a black eye the government would rather cover up, but Bob’s not willing to let it go, so his superiors at the Department of Defense shut him up by giving him a new assignment, to execute a plan to eliminate the Muslim Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Alexander Siddig), a radical whose eventual kingship could result in irreparable damage to American oil concerns in the region. Those concerns are evaluated by Connex-Killen investigator Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), who is contracted by company bigwigs Christopher Plummer and Chris Cooper to figure out why a major billion dollar contract went to the Chinese, and what involvement a smooth talking American lobbyist (Tim Blake Nelson, ranting about the necessity of corruption) had in another deal in Kazakhstan that went down under a shade of suspicion. Other threads include Matt Damon as a partner in a Swiss energy firm who lands a huge contract with the Prince after a horrible tragedy brings them to terms, the American government involvement in the plot to assassinate the Prince, a plot that lands Clooney in a torture chair sequence not for the faint of heart, and the payoff to the opening missing missile story involving a poor Muslim boy, laid off from his oil job after a big merger renders him useless, who is conned by a persuasive cleric to martyr himself for the good of jihad, the film’s saddest and most urgent story thread. “Syriana” is a large film, with exasperating ides and far reaching political ambitions, but like many stories of this magnitude, it’s ultimately the proletarian face that registers the strongest emotions, while, naturally, the wealthy puppet masters bear the brunt of ours, and the filmmakers most intense scorn. The film was written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, who won an Oscar for writing Steven Soderbergh’s masterpiece “Traffic”, and like that 2000 epic, “Syriana’s” format, switched from drugs to oil, covers all the basics from top to bottom, and often it’s simply exhausting to follow. The endgame is powerful, for sure, and the individual stories are all intriguing, but the jumbled execution is frustrating, some of the political jargon, especially in the Jeffrey Wright investigation, is too smart for its own good, in a who-cares-what-the-audiences-understands kind of way, and the whole project smacks of self importance. “Traffic” is a modern classic because each character has an arch that either ends in tragedy or a kind of noncommittal middle ground between agitation and peace, which itself mirrors the ongoing struggle to control drug trafficking and addiction (with an unfortunate edge to agitation), but “Syriana” labors to achieve that kind of perfect climax for its various heroes, and though the loose ends are tied when all is said and done, it wasn’t without a mighty struggle, and more than a few contrivances. That said, even though it’s not an entirely convincing picture as a whole (seriously, not to call myself slow, but there were times when I had no idea what was going on here), the subject matter is interesting, the cast is impressive, especially Clooney, who is having the best year of his career, and the script is filled with great lines (“Capitalism cannot exist without waste,” cracks one smarmy Arab businessman to Plummer; the film’s summation of about everything it stands for) from a writer who knows the importance of a well formed zinger, be it purely political, or otherwise satirical. It may not be “Traffic”, and it has nary an image in it as special as James Dean’s “Giant” triumph, but I think that’s the point, for in today’s climate of skyrocketing gas prices, desperate oil demand, and war upon war in oil saturated Middle East countries, no longer is striking oil a glorious notion, but one fraught with deception, greed, and murder. “Syriana” has all of that bad stuff in spades, and even if you come out of it scratching your head, it’ll be a head filled with newfound contempt, and many questions regarding the richest business on this green, and black, planet. “Syriana” is playing at the Quaker Crossing theaters in Orchard Park. by Adam Suraf
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