[Binkie]

Syriana

Reviewers that are utter assholes seemed to have thrown in the idea that this movie was based off of the book "See No Evil," by Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer.

Having read that, I figured I would have come in and seen a movie that was based around real events this guy had encountered (as that's what his book is about). Especially with the thematic tag-line, "How the CIA lost the Middle East." Far from it, as it's completely made up. This film's plot is so implausable it's not even funny. The sad thing is they try to make it seem real by basing it around real figures such as the Saudi Royal Family. Only thing it has to do with Baer is a reference to "memos."

Idea behind the film: the CIA does the dirty work for Big Oil. It goes so far as to suggest that the Iraq war was entirely based on the idea that we just wanted their oil fields. Someone want to do the math for me? Calculate how many years of Iraqi oil imports it's going to take to pay off a 2 trillion dollar bill? It's just utter crap that's pushed so far, it just goes beyond the realm of believability.

Hezbollah guerillas are depicted like a community-friendly gang that saves the day and is completely tight with the CIA officers that are in their country supposedly assassinating muslims. And of course it's totally plausable that they would throw an Iranian agent out on his ass in the middle of an interrogation session of a US intelligence agent. R-i-g-h-t. Oh wait, I almost forgot to mention that the very CIA agent they're tight with, is in fact a man who "infiltrated their organization in '85" to provide valuable intelligence.

I don't want to give away a whole lot of info on the movie, but I do want it cleared up that this is a film based on ENTERTAINMENT and has nothing to do with real events or a realistic portrayl of the CIA or it's operations.

I'm still baffled as to why I was surrounded by teen couples in the theater. Half of them had to walk out in the middle of it cause they couldn't understand a damn thing going on. Confusing? Yes. The whole movie is a series of convoluted sub-plots in which many of the characters' roles are not given to people straight up. You just have to figure it out, which is what they use to tie this into real political figures of today. Clooney, at one point, ends up in a metting with a woman AWFULLY reminiscent of Rice, but of course they never said that was Rice. Just like they gave locations for every country, state, and city where events took place, except for Saudi Arabia, since they were portraying the Royal Family. So basically you had to fill that one in everytime it refered to a location as, "The Persian Gulf." At that, it pisses me off cause they fucked up the port of Rahimah like no one's business. Argh! I loved Traffic the mini-series, but this film just pissed me off so incredibly bad. Maybe it's just the way it was marketed (i.e. "A smart film," "based on the book by...," etc.), I don't know. Wasn't a winner for me.