Written & by directed by Stephen Gaghan
Rated MA15+
Opens February 16

Syriana is a serious film about Middle East oil and government-sponsored corporate greed. However, Syriana takes itself way too seriously and it suffers greatly from its inability to break free from Hollywood's painfully predictable formulas.

After seeing the trailer, I had great expectations. Half way through the movie however, it becomes clear that Syriana reverts back to the 'good-guy/bad-guy' Hollywood recipe — only here, it's good-Emir/bad-Emir.

The geo-politics of the Middle East is reduced to the conflict of a good Emir — the reform-minded Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) — with his younger ambitious brother.

Prince Nasir, the apparent heir to the throne has grand plans for his small oil-rich Gulf country. He has great respect for his country's Bedouin tribes and wants to give women the right to vote.

Prince Nasir's father — who is an ally of the US — favours his younger son to take the throne after his death, because Prince Nasir has just granted natural gas drilling rights to a higher Chinese bid, upsetting the US-owned Connex corporation.

All the characters in Syriana exist only in relation to the central 'good-prince/bad-prince' theme.

Energy Analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) is offered a job to help achieve Prince Nasir's reformist ideas. His wife Julie, (Amanda Peet) — who never finds her place in this movie — only engages her husband on an emotional level and never seems to  discuss the political issues with him.

Syriana overestimates the power and reach of the US and it subscribes to very simple stereotypes of corrupt Middle Eastern rulers conspiring with US corporations for oil access.

When Connex is celebrating its merger with a smaller Texas oil company Killlen, Prince Naser's father and brother are guests of honour. Simultaneously, the CIA is attempting to assassinate Prince Nasir with a satellite-guided missile.

Syriana overlooks many historical events that have shaped the oil politics of the region to this day. The 1953 CIA-funded operation in Iran to stop Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh nationalising Iran's Oil industry is mentioned only in the passing and is left unexplored. This event would have given more clues about the real politics of the region than this unsophisticated tale of a reformist prince struggling with his corrupt brother.

The citizens of Prince Nasir's nameless Persian Gulf state remain absent in Syriana, while the prince's only hope seems to be a naive energy analyst and an out-of-touch but well-intentioned CIA agent.

Syriana is void of any real insight though worth watching merely because it tries — and in Hollywood, that is rare.