DVD | Syriana

Rating: R16 - Contains Violence & Offensive Language.
Duration: 122 Minutes.
Genre : Political Drama.
Actors: Christopher Plummer, Chris Cooper, Jeffrey Wright, Matt Damon, William Hurt, George Clooney, Amanda Peet, Tim Blake Nelson, Alexander Siddig.
Release Date: Available now.

Syriana is a fictional movie based on former CIA man Robert Baer’s book, See No Evil. It’s a tricky movie to get into, as the story tends to jump all over the place, following multiple streams of story line. After a while however you start to see the big picture and the movie gets interesting.

Basically it’s a political statement about oil, big money, politics and some very murky dealings. It’s gritty and real, but tends not to take any political sides. Having said that, American, especially politics and big business come in for a lashing.

Someone in the special features made an interesting comment – they said that there were no real bad people in the movie – referring to traditional stories that have good vs evil – and that everyone is intrinsically good, because they believe they are doing the right thing. Personally I think that’s a load of crock. I’d say that there are very few (if any) good people in this movie. It’s all about back room meetings, secret deals and the desire to pervert justice or democracy in the pursuit of personal gain.

Syriana is about a giant beast that is addicted to a drug that it has no control over, and it’s efforts to control the distribution of the drug. It’s about the lengths that giant go to, to force control.

It’s also about what happens to the population of countries caught in this invisible struggle, and how easy it is for fanatical groups to inspire these people to rise up and take action.

An easy film to watch this isn’t, but it is a revealing one. It has some outstanding performances, from actors used to being the star, but taking second place to the story.

The movie is paced quite well, with a slow start, enabling you to come to grips with the complexity of the various threads, which builds on itself to an explosive conclusion.

Food for thought
Petrol. It’s something we’re all addicted to whether we admit it or not. The way it controls our lives is not healthy, but is there anything we can (or want) to do about it?