Syriana

After getting stuffed with cakes and cookies at my Family's annual Holiday Party, I decided to jet into Hollywood to see "Syriana" at the Archlight in Hollywood. Yes, it's a drive from the OC but trust me, the cost is well worth it as no one talks, no one answers their cell phones (unlike here where it's "Oh, Hi Cindy I'm in a Movie. What's Up..."), and ushers guide you to your assigned seats. But enough about the experience, the politics of the movie is what really made me pay attention to the plot and the multiple story lines. So be forewarned, the following will spoil your movie experience if you have not yet seen the movie.

Syriana was one of the greatest movies that I have seen all year, it dealt with current events, with our war on terror, and the possibility that our government is planning to "liberate" Iran (Under this administration the term "Liberate" has a different meaning then it once had during World War II, but I digress). Bob Barnes (played by George Clooney) is a person stuck in the middle between the State and Defense Departments in his work for the CIA, at the beginning of the movie he is involved in a missile deal that goes bad. He sells two missiles, just to have one go to the bad guys. As a result he blows up the car that had the one missile, but the other got away and would turn up later in the movie.

Meanwhile, in the background two other storylines are playing out. A merger between two oil companies "Connex" and "Kleen" comes under congressional and Justice Investigations when it is revealed the company bought their way into Kazakhstan in order to keep the Chinese out of the oil market. As a result a small group of Washington "power players" are forced into damaged control to keep the story from getting out and destroying the merger and making the company the fifth largest oil company in the world. In "an Oil-producing Gulf Nation," the Amir and his two sons are getting into a political squabble over the future of their kingdom. One son, Prince Nashir Al-Subaai (Played by Alexander Siddig), has hopes for a democratic country with a Parliament and granting women the right to vote, but quickly falls out of favor with his father (part of this is due to his agreement to accept the bid from the Chinese). The other son, Prince Meshal Al-Subaai, is friends with some of the "power players" in Washington and has his father's ear. This soon becomes evident when he is selected as the new Amir by his father. His selection as Amir leads to a coup by Nashir while his brother is attending the "Oil man of the year Awards." However Nashir's coup fails when the CIA intervenes (and that's all I'm going to say about that).

There are some other storylines in play, such as the death of Bryan Woodman's (played by Matt Daemon) son at the Amir's party in Spain. The death causes Woodman to have a "Fuck it all" attitude and accepts a position as a financial advisor to Prince Nashir when he agrees to his plan of a construction of a pipeline through the "Eurasia" Triangle so they can control the deliver and the cost of the oil. At the same time Barnes is trying to complete his mission, which was to take out Prince Nashir, but since his connection in Iran has switched sides (from working with the CIA to working with Hezbollah) his mission goes "off the grid." We never know if he was trying to save Prince Nashir at the end or if he was ultimately trying to complete his mission even though he had fallen out of favor at the CIA.

At this point you may be wondering what happened with the second missile. Just as what happened to us in Afghanistan, where we sold weapons to the Taliban to force out the Soviets, just to have our weapons used against us when we invaded the country after 9/11, the same thing happens in Syriana. This time the missile ends up in the hands of Jihadists who use it with a dingy packed full of C4 explosives and ram it right into ConnexKleen's new Liquid Natural Gas facility at the end of the movie.

While our leaders feel it is in our best interest to put their hands in the "cookie jars" of the world, a majority of Americans are too involved in their daily lives to care for themselves. Just in my travels and talking to others I've learned that we as a country have a long way to go to have respect and understanding for the different countries and cultures of the world. Syriana is just one movie which will hopefully introduce American’s to the complexity of global and corporate politics, a movie which will hopefully peak our interests in what happens beyond our borders and how that affects us here at home.