This movie wants to be too many things, and in so doing, botches up arguably its main message, a commendable warning to western societies to avoid mistakes of the past. I found that many subplots were either useless to the story or frustratingly left undeveloped. The sad thing is that they eventually end up, in my humble opinion, destroying this movie, especially when you consider that Stephen Gaghan no doubt had to trim a lot of content to fit this whole adventure into 126 minutes. I am convinced that he left out a lot of material, which could have assisted us, poor viewers in following the main plots of this movie.
I don't want to spread the blame where it is not deserved, and I really felt that the cast delivered strong performances throughout, though no actor deserved any specific honorable mention either. I did not understand though the added value in having George Clooney take on this extra weight for the movie - I bet that most viewers of this film won't know/care what the actual Robert Baer looks/ed like before watching it.
In a nutshell, we have here a complicated movie, where little attempt is made to vulgarize anything for the uninformed viewer, yet a lot of film reel is wasted on useless scenes. Though I do not feel that I am the biggest fan of any of the parties negatively painted in this movie, I couldn't help but comment that it does paint a rather naive portrait of all the "good guys" being caricaturesque innocent angels, which I doubt is a true depiction of reality. This, I believe ultimately weakens Syriana's message, as it comes out biased. Rent it if you are well versed in history and financial/legal jargon, avoid it at the theaters. I am overrating this movie with a 6/10, but I feel that we need more of this type of historical critical movies, even though I wish they would be better made.
The cast - 7/10 - Nothing terrible, but nothing terrific either.
Stephen Gaghan - 3/10 - Needs to take the blame for terribly indulgent editing work.
Robert Baer - I feel bad for him, I think he would have preferred a more poignant focused rendition of his book, considering the pain he had to go through.
I don't want to spread the blame where it is not deserved, and I really felt that the cast delivered strong performances throughout, though no actor deserved any specific honorable mention either. I did not understand though the added value in having George Clooney take on this extra weight for the movie - I bet that most viewers of this film won't know/care what the actual Robert Baer looks/ed like before watching it.
In a nutshell, we have here a complicated movie, where little attempt is made to vulgarize anything for the uninformed viewer, yet a lot of film reel is wasted on useless scenes. Though I do not feel that I am the biggest fan of any of the parties negatively painted in this movie, I couldn't help but comment that it does paint a rather naive portrait of all the "good guys" being caricaturesque innocent angels, which I doubt is a true depiction of reality. This, I believe ultimately weakens Syriana's message, as it comes out biased. Rent it if you are well versed in history and financial/legal jargon, avoid it at the theaters. I am overrating this movie with a 6/10, but I feel that we need more of this type of historical critical movies, even though I wish they would be better made.
The cast - 7/10 - Nothing terrible, but nothing terrific either.
Stephen Gaghan - 3/10 - Needs to take the blame for terribly indulgent editing work.
Robert Baer - I feel bad for him, I think he would have preferred a more poignant focused rendition of his book, considering the pain he had to go through.