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 | Syriana Director: Stephen Gaghan Rated: MA Now screening  If you've pulled up to a petrol pump lately, or looked out of a bus window at a petrol station to make yourself feel better, you'll have noticed fuel is on the pricey side. Part of the problem, they tell us, is that a lot of oil is in the Middle East where friendly American companies can't get to it. This causes some international difficulties, and then you get a movie called 'Syriana'.Stephen Gaghan, who wowed the world with the movie 'Traffic', sets his sights for his latest film on the machinations of those involved in world oil, and there seem to be a lot of them. First of all, Connex, a large American oil company, has just lost the rights to drill in the country of Emir Hamad Al-Subaai (Nadim Sawalha). In order to recover, it merges with a smaller company, Killen, who have somehow secured drilling rights in Kazakhstan. The US government is suspicious and investigates the deal, so Connex has Bennet Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), a lawyer from their firm, make sure the deal passes inspection.Meanwhile, in the Persian Gulf, young Wasim (Mazhar Munir) loses his job as an oil worker and, with his friend Farooq (Sonnell Dadral), starts taking instruction from a radical cleric (Omar Mostafa), who somehow got his hands on a missile from the US government. CIA agent Bob Barnes (George Clooney) keeps asking questions about the weapon, taken from under his nose, and to distract him his bosses send him to assassinate Emir Al-Subaai's eldest son, Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig). The Prince is a reformist who wants to change the way his country does business. He has cultivated a friendship with energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) after his son tragically died at the Al-Subaai home. All these separate stories eventually intertwine, if not exactly meet. It has to be said that most of them are not nearly as interesting as they should be. Wasim's emerging fanaticism, for example, fails to engage in any way as it happens far too suddenly. Holiday's investigation into the Connex-Killen merger looks like it might enter some interesting waters, with mysterious references to the Committee to Liberate Iran, but it also falls flat. Agent Barnes' story is a little more exciting, though hard to follow. The major problem is that these characters feel more like points-of-view than human beings. The performances, though not bad, are mostly undistinguished. Clooney, Siddig and Christopher Plummer as the shady head of Holiday's law-firm, put in the most interesting portrayals. As it turns out, some of the best work is done by the minor characters, like the crooked oilmen played by Chris Cooper and Tim Blake Nelson. 'Syriana' has a great premise that unfortunately does not develop into a compelling story. Perhaps it suffers from trying to tell too many tales, where building on one or two would have worked better. Nonetheless, it makes some important points and, based as it is on a non-fiction book, deserves some attention.  | |
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