Syriana, Stephen Gaghen's political thriller about the oil industry's interests in the Middle East, has one major problem. It is utterly boring. The movie's story is simplistic and without surprises. Various plotlines are introduced slowly over the first hour of the movie. Two oil companies plan to merge, but (of course) there have been payoffs along the way so the US government is investigating. The merging oil company downsizes, causing unemployment and leading young men to become Islamic martyrs. A kindharted crown prince of a middle eastern country wants to transform his country into a liberal, modern state, but the US wants to maintain control over the country's oil and wants him dead. There are more plotlines, but they are not particularly relevant. Everything that happens in these plotlines is perfectly predictable. Syriana is only considered complex or confusing because the various plotlines are revealed slowly in 5-10 minute snippets. So, you get a few minutes of corrupt oilmen planning their merger, then cut to the middle east and a CIA agent, then to the noble prince and so on, going back and forth throughout the movie.
Syriana fails because you know where everything is going. Will the noble crown prince be able to transform his middle eastern nation? Will the corrupt oil companies complete their merger? Well, given that this movie is clearly designed to be a "realistic portrayal" of the interplay between the oil industry and the middle east, you can easily guess. The acting in the movie is good, as George Clooney (CIA agent), Matt Damon (investment analyst), Alexander Siddig (Prince Nasir), and Mazhar Musin as the terrorist Nasim all portray their charaters with conviction. However, the direction and story fails them in the end, as the method of jumping back and forth among numerous plotlines fails to allow any of the characters to develop any complexity. So, when a political thriller is predictible, plodding, and doesn't intorducte any interesting or complex characters what you have, is a bad movie.
