Syriana

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Takes off with the lightning speed of a thriller, the gonzo force of frontline journalism and the emotional wallop of a drama that puts a human face on shocking statistics.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

An endlessly fascinating movie.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

For two hours I felt like a kitten chasing an elusive ball of catnip that remained just beyond my paw.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

What's so powerful about the film is the rich stories it tells and how it leads them like so many human tributaries to one black, bubbling source.

New York Magazine Ken Tucker

A film that transcends its obvious timeliness to say some elemental things about personal loyalty and institutional betrayal.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

A fearless and ambitious piece of work, made with equal parts passion and calculation, an unapologetically entertaining major studio release with compelling real-world relevance, a film that takes numerous risks and thrives on them all.

USA Today Claudia Puig

A gripping and fascinating tale of political intrigue that spans three continents, its focus trained on the volatile Middle East. It's a global portrait of danger, deception and disillusionment, with no dearth of human casualties.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

In today's environment, it's a rare thing to find a movie with interesting characters in dense, intelligent storylines, but that's what Syriana offers. It is one of the best films of 2005.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Clooney, who gained 35 pounds for the role, gives a self-effacing but highly effective performance.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

A gripping movie about espionage, loyalty and betrayal.

Film Threat Pete Vonder Haar

A bleak and powerful movie, made all the more sobering by how much of it isn't fiction.

Empire Colin Kennedy

Demanding, even confusing at times, this is required viewing that requires your full attention.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Given the large cast, the international hopscotch, and the tantalizing illusion of depth, the movie's tone is "Frontline" meets John le Carré. Compared to the complacence of something like "The Interpreter," it's a regular brain tickler.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Gaghan brings in many more players, but edits the film into the lean, propulsive shape of a thriller. That ends up being something of a problem; some sub-plots never fully untangle and characters get lost as Gaghan rushes toward a conclusion that, taken on its own, is the stuff of a slightly hysterical leftie pamphlet.

Newsweek David Ansen

This is a movie that sticks its political neck out, that throbs with dread, paranoia and outrage, that doesn't coddle the audience by neatly tying things up.

Time Richard Corliss

Not a conventionally satisfying movie but a kind of illustrated journalism: an engrossing, insider's tour of the world's hottest spots, grandest schemes and most dangerous men.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A weighty and deeply intriguing look at the many-tentacled beast that is the international oil industry. Wide-ranging and restlessly probing, Stephen Gaghan's second directorial effort uses the same mosaic storytelling technique as in his Oscar-winning screenplay for "Traffic."

The New York Times Dana Stevens

It aims to be a great deal more than a standard geopolitical thriller and thereby succeeds in being one of the best geopolitical thrillers in a very long time.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Seldom have form, content and cultural sensibility been so excitably aligned as in this fascinating, exasperating film about the unholy marriage of power politics and global business.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Syriana is the most challenging and uncompromising movie to come out of Hollywood in a long time.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

In its seriousness, Syriana has an absorbing, ominous roundness that plays even better with a second viewing.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Gaghan is attempting to cover so much ground in Syriana that the movie at times feels a little suffocating.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

Syriana depicts a system so thoroughly and intractably rotten that the standard liberal how-you-can-make-a-difference solutions--being more conscientious about using electricity, getting a hybrid car, and so on--only look like so much spit in the face of an atomic fireball.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Politically, Syriana is a card-carrying liberal, more in tune with Le Carre and Greene than with Clancy.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Reserved yet still suspenseful and hugely ambitious, Syriana sets out to prove what many have come to suspect -- that oil money is the root of all contemporary evil.

TV Guide Ken Fox

We can only hope that the time frame is meant to be sometime before 9/11, and not after. Either way, it's a troubling vision of how terrorism and "martyrdom" occur on both sides of this ghostly war, and is both perpetrated and facilitated by the very forces enlisted to stop it.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Clooney is the soul of Syriana, and his face is what you're left with long after the movie's obsessive plot details have sifted away.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

This is intelligent, committed, and politically provocative, though its narrative puzzle box may prompt you to throw up your hands and let Exxon go on running the world.

Slate David Edelstein

A grim, twisty international conspiracy picture that challenges the audience on every level, political and aesthetic. The aesthetic part is a bit of an obstacle, though. I can't remember a time I had as much trouble--at a movie I admired--just figuring out what the hell was going on.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The film itself operates on shifting sands. Shot documentary-style, by Robert Elswit, and accompanied by a pounding soundtrack, Syriana makes high-octane melodrama look like revealed truth.

The New Yorker David Denby

A major film without being a great film. It's a strange movie, and a stunningly pessimistic one, and the strangeness and pessimism connect it to other recent American films in ways that suggest that something unhappy in the national mood has crept into the movies.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Gaghan's a filmmaker for the gamer who doesn't need to have the plot follow a neat, linear path. Besides, you don't need to know precisely what's going on; no one else in the film does either. Which is Gaghan's point.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

This multiplicity--of people, stories, settings--is both the weakness and strength of the film. It is not easy to follow all the various threads, to get the pith of every scene. Still, this very abundance gives the whole picture a sense of authority.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Syriana falls down at the most basic storytelling level, and this incoherence damages even the good parts.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Indeed, the point of Syriana appears to be that the whole lousy, corrupt, oil-producing and -consuming world is a ball of wax, ready to melt.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The movie adds up to one of the smartest and most ambitious political thrillers in years. But if you find a more difficult movie to follow this year, it will be in Mandarin without subtitles.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's simply not a very good movie. Its story line is populated with so many characters and meaningless names that it's nearly impossible to follow, and its author's message doesn't amount to much more than a cry of despair.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The movie comes together like a nihilistic jigsaw puzzle - with a few pieces removed for that special, indefinable dash of pseudo-density.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

It's hard to get swept away when you're struggling to figure out who's doing what to whom and why.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

The character and geographical jumps leave you in a muddle with thinly sketched personalities and confusing plot points. Worse, dialogue dense with nuance and shaded meaning flies by too quickly.