Syriana

Starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, Amanda Peet, Christopher Plummer, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson

Rated R

            “Syriana” is a thought-provoking masterpiece that, along with “Good Night, and Good Luck,” catapults George Clooney’s career into Oscar-town. Stephen Gaghan, who wrote “Traffic,” directs this political film with a vicious tone, and although many will dismiss the movie as ‘unworthy’ simply because they are unable to follow the twisty plot, “Syriana” will ultimately be appreciated by those with the intelligence to enjoy a movie that actually asks questions, a quality missing from recent films (“Just Friends,” “Yours, Mine and Ours,” “In the Mix,” and others are examples of celluloid equivalents to a sewage tank.)

            Clooney stars as Bob Barnes, a CIA agent sent to the Middle East to assassinate Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Alexander Siddig), who is hoping to take his ill father’s throne as King of a Middle-Eastern country. When Barnes’ plan goes awry, he is tortured and sent back to America, where the CIA attempt to distance themselves from Barnes and the mission. Barnes feels that his country has turned his back on him for the first time in his long career.

Meanwhile, Matt Damon plays Bryan Woodman, an analyst for an oil firm in Switzerland who gets Prince Nasir’s account after his son dies at a political party for Nasir. His wife, Julie (Amanda Peet), thinks that Bryan is using the tragedy to profit from the Arabs, but Bryan is actually interested in Nasir’s beliefs, which could actually benefit his country’s people (Nasir’s brother, the chosen successor to the throne, is more interested in making lucrative oil-drilling deals with American companies.)

            In the U.S., two major oil companies merge – Houston-based Killen, led by Jimmy Pope (Chris Cooper), and Connex. Lawyer Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), a partner in the merge, begins to question the ethics involved in the scheme, and the bribes executives will pay to have their company succeed.

The merging of Killen and Connex leads two Arab boys, who lose their jobs to the corporate takeover of an oil rig in the Middle East, to join a pack of suicide bombers, and eventually they drive a lost missile, which ties back to Barnes, into a gigantic, at-sea oil-rig.

Meanwhile, the CIA are still attempting to murder Nasir, and Barnes, feeling double-crossed, travels to the Middle East to stop the murder. The climax is one heck of a finale to an already fantastic film, involving a distressed Barnes driving his car through a desert landscape and warning Woodman and Nasir of the CIA’s plans.

Clooney, Damon, Wright, Cooper, Peet, Siddig and supporting actors Christopher Plummer, William Hurt and Tim Blake Nelson all turn in dynamite performances, and Clooney especially should get an Oscar nomination for his role, which he famously gained 30 pounds for. “Syriana” will probably be too controversial to get a Best Picture nomination, but it deserves one, as does “Good Night, and Good Luck.” Here are two movies that dare to be different and end up as two of the year’s best.

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