Review – Syriana (KS, March 2006)

Syriana, Warner Bros. Dir: Stephen Gaghan; Cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Siddiq. In English,Farsi, Urdu and Arabic, with subtitles, mercifully, in English and Japanese.

In a fictitious oil-rich Emirate, Prince Nasim, reform-minded heir to the throne (Alexander Siddiq) has persuaded his aged father, the Emir, to award lucrative oil drilling rights to a Chinese company instead of the Texas giant Connex . Stung by this setback, Connex arranges a merger with Killen (love the names!), a group which has just won, by questionable means, a contract in Kazakhstan. The State department wants the deal to go through, but the Justice department wants Killen’s shadiness papered over. An ambitious young Washington corporate attorney (Wright) is assigned to ease the tainted merger along. It’s not an easy task, because everyone involved is unapologetically corrupt.

Enter Bob Barnes (a bloated and bearded Clooney), a veteran CIA operative who has seen better days. In a back room in Tehran, he has just brokered the sale of two Stinger missiles in exchange for some assassinations. One of the missiles goes missing, but the assassinations come off, so Bob anticipates promotion to a desk job. Washington and the oilmen, though, figure they could all do without the reformist Prince Nasim. So Bob gets assigned to “retire” the prince. Mistakes are made.

Well below the radar of all this intrigue are the Pakistani migrant workers, their visas cancelled, disdained by the locals, who are stranded in the Emirate when the Chinese deal goes through. A young man called Wasim (Mazhar Munir) is befriended by a member of the local Islamic school, or madrassa. We realise, sadly, that Wasim is being recruited for something more than Koranic studies, and we also realize where Bob’s other missile went, and what it will be used for. Yet you feel for Wasim like you do for no one else in the film.

In Syriana, there are no real heroes, and it raises uncomfortable questions. They are questions worth asking, though, and it’s a wonder this well-acted, well-written film ever got made at all by a Hollywood studio.