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Syriana
Warner Bros.


7.9

based on 40 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 312 votes
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FILM:

Abandon

MPAA RATING: R for violence and language

Starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet, Jeffrey Wright, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Plummer, Chris Cooper, William Hurt, and Mazhar Munir

From writer/director Stephen Gaghan, winner of the Best Screenplay Academy Award for "Traffic," comes Syriana, a political thriller that unfolds against the intrigues and corruption of the global oil industry. From the players brokering back-room deals in Washington to the men toiling in the oil fields of the Persian Gulf, the film's multiple storylines weave together to illuminate the human consequences of the fierce pursuit of wealth and power. (Warner Bros.)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Stephen Gaghan Robert Baer (book See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism) (suggestion)
DIRECTED BY:	Stephen Gaghan
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 20, 2006 Theatrical: November 23, 2005
RUNNING TIME:	126 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

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.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

An endlessly fascinating movie.

100

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.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.9 (out of 10) based on 312 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Wolfgang K. gave it a7:
Like Inarritu's "Babel","Syriana" is another movie that covers the globe as its setting. Although the representation of certain groups, individuals and institutions such as immigrant Pakistani workers, the fundamentalist Arab cleric and the CIA have some shotcomings, the movie covers these shortcomings through the interchanging scenes and the relationships of the subjects to each other. Great Movie....

Doug B. gave it a1:
No entertainment value. Slow and confusing. I feel I was ripped off. I am going to hesitate to see any more movies with George Clooney.

Jon C. gave it a1:
One of two movies I have ever fallen asleep in.

Sam F. gave it a9:
This movie is far subtler and more nuanced than one reviewer on this site credits it with when describing it as 'far-left propaganda'. It's nothing of the sort. The message isn't that America is evil and has only itself to blame for the terrorist attacks aimed at it. Rather it shows a degree of unwitting complicity in the underlying socio-economic triggers for terrorism amongst some elements of American society. Contrary to suggestions, also, that this film portrayed the Muslims (even those coordinating terrorist attacks) as innocent victims, one is hardly made to feel sympathetic towards the dogmatist who by his own admission rejects all reason and logic relying entirely on the Koran to the exclusion of all else as he cynically manipulates disadvantaged youth. Slowly the viewer sees the transformation of a young migrant labourer who has been laid off because of the Prince's deal with a Chinese company (yes - not only American greed is responsible) transform into a suicide bomber, naively led on by masterful and sinister fanatics. On the other hand, far removed from all this, we see those high up in America's corporate hierarchy blissfully immune and ignorant of all this as they casually make decisions that drastically effect huge numbers of people. Corruption lurks like some insidious, pervasive shadow everywhere. We witness the moral decline of Matt Damon's energy analyst character who comes into the employment of the Prince after his son dies, partially as a result of the death. The real stand out here, though, is undoubtedly George Clooney, whose role is utterly without glamour and thus brilliant real. He, unlike Damon, is redeemed over the course of the film and endures everything - battling corruption, dealing with Iranian intelligence agents and suffering torture at the hands of a deceitful, cruel double agent. By far the best performance of his career. The film has been criticized as too convoluted. It's true it has many characters and many plot strands, but if a viewer pays attention and applies the gray matter they will gain a rewarding experience. Not the type of film to relax and unwind to, but definitely worth the while to watch it, appreciate it and get thinking.

Alan N. gave it a9:
This is one of the best films I have ever seen. Anyone with even a remote interest in world politics should see this movie. To be rewarded though you have to concentrate, this film is not complicated if you pay attention but anyone expecting to be spoon-fed the storyline should look elsewhere. I guess some of the negative comments on here are from blind patriots who see this movie as Anti-American and nothing more. It is not Anti-American, it is Anti-Corruption ..... wherever that may be found and exposed. Superb stuff.

Daniel gave it a10:
Even though Clooney and Damon are extreme liberals, they played their parts well. Now if Congress would just believe what Syriana said about Iran.

John S. gave it a10:
Superb! For raising important issue of today's reality - zealous pursuit of wealth and power - in oil industry in this case, how they are interconnected with powerful people in Washington and why some want America to be dependent on oil in those middle eastern countries. Yes, it's not a standard Hollywood staple with standard happy-ending, but rather a thought provoker to encourage the American people to think how the resources of this great nation are being abused for the benefits of few. Everybody needs to watch this movie and THINK about the state of affairs.

Syriana Warner Bros.

Syriana
Warner Bros.