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Syriana

  • 2005
  • R
  • 2h 8m
IMDb RATING
6.9/10
136K
YOUR RATING
Syriana (2005)
Trailer for Syriana
Play trailer2:24
19 Videos
99+ Photos
Political ThrillerSpyDramaThriller

A politically charged epic about the state of the oil industry in the hands of those personally involved in and affected by it.A politically charged epic about the state of the oil industry in the hands of those personally involved in and affected by it.A politically charged epic about the state of the oil industry in the hands of those personally involved in and affected by it.

  • Director
    • Stephen Gaghan
  • Writers
    • Stephen Gaghan
    • Robert Baer
  • Stars
    • George Clooney
    • Matt Damon
    • Amanda Peet
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    6.9/10
    136K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Stephen Gaghan
    • Writers
      • Stephen Gaghan
      • Robert Baer
    • Stars
      • George Clooney
      • Matt Damon
      • Amanda Peet
    • 667User reviews
    • 321Critic reviews
    • 76Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Won 1 Oscar
      • 13 wins & 30 nominations total

    Videos19

    Syriana
    Trailer 2:24
    Syriana
    Syriana
    Trailer 2:13
    Syriana
    Syriana
    Trailer 2:13
    Syriana
    Syriana
    Trailer 2:24
    Syriana
    Syriana
    Clip 0:58
    Syriana
    Syriana
    Clip 0:47
    Syriana
    Syriana
    Clip 1:00
    Syriana

    Photos169

    View Poster
    View Poster
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    + 163
    View Poster

    Top cast99+

    Edit
    George Clooney
    George Clooney
    • Bob Barnes
    Matt Damon
    Matt Damon
    • Bryan Woodman
    Amanda Peet
    Amanda Peet
    • Julie Woodman
    Kayvan Novak
    Kayvan Novak
    • Arash
    Amr Waked
    Amr Waked
    • Mohammed Sheik Agiza
    Christopher Plummer
    Christopher Plummer
    • Dean Whiting
    Jeffrey Wright
    Jeffrey Wright
    • Bennett Holiday
    Chris Cooper
    Chris Cooper
    • Jimmy Pope
    Robert Foxworth
    Robert Foxworth
    • Tommy Barton
    Nicky Henson
    Nicky Henson
    • Sydney Hewitt
    Nicholas Art
    • Riley Woodman
    Steven Hinkle
    Steven Hinkle
    • Max Woodman
    Daisy Tormé
    Daisy Tormé
    • Rebecca
    Peter Gerety
    Peter Gerety
    • Leland Janus
    Richard Lintern
    Richard Lintern
    • Bryan's Boss
    Jocelyn Quivrin
    Jocelyn Quivrin
    • Vincent
    Mazhar Munir
    Mazhar Munir
    • Wasim Khan
    Shahid Ahmed
    • Saleem Ahmed Khan
    • Director
      • Stephen Gaghan
    • Writers
      • Stephen Gaghan
      • Robert Baer
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      George Clooney suffered a spinal injury during a stunt. Due to the weight he gained for his role, the injury left him bedridden for a month and caused severe migraines, which prevented him from doing publicity for Ocean's Twelve (2004). The injury was eventually corrected with surgery. Clooney has since called his weight gain "pretty stupid".
    • Goofs
      (at arouns 3 mins) The scene is supposed to be located in Tehran, but on the license plate of Bob's car it is misspelled as Nehran (one dot failing). In Iranian movies and serials, cars have white license plates with all characters in one line, but this license plate is yellow with the text written on two lines. The Arabic numerals 4, 5 and 6 are different from the Persian numerals; this license plate shows an Arabic 4 and 6.
    • Quotes

      Bryan Woodman: But what do you need a financial advisor for? Twenty years ago you had the highest Gross National Product in the world, now you're tied with Albania. Your second largest export is secondhand goods, closely followed by dates which you're losing five cents a pound on... You know what the business community thinks of you? They think that a hundred years ago you were living in tents out here in the desert chopping each other's heads off and that's where you'll be in another hundred years, so, yes, on behalf of my firm I accept your money.

    • Crazy credits
      There are no opening credits after the title is shown.
    • Connections
      Featured in HBO First Look: Syriana (2005)
    • Soundtracks
      Let Da Monkey Out
      Written by Redman (as Reggie Noble), Erick Sermon and Johnny 'Guitar' Watson (as Johnny Guitar Watson)

      Performed by Redman

      Courtesy of The Island Def Jam Music Group

      Under license from Universal Music Enterprises

      Contains samples from "If I Had The Power"

      Performed by Johnny 'Guitar' Watson

      Courtesy of Concord Music Group, Inc.

    User reviews667

    Featured review
    8/10

    An Exhausting Tour of the Many Faces of Corruption Around Oil

    In "Syriana," writer/director Stephen Gaghan uses the busy style of "Crash" and "Amores Perros" to illustrate the complex geopolitics behind oil. Each sector--regulators, "intelligence", lobbyists, grease-the-wheel-ers and cogs-in-the-wheel-ers, in the network of greed, idealism, self-interest, sophistication and naiveté, is represented by a different character followed through the movie to bring them together, directly or indirectly, into the climax.

    This technique to coordinate a huge ensemble of captivating character actors woven tightly together in a complex story is helped enormously by Robert Elswit's ever-moving camera shots as visually and sound edited by Tim Squyres, who had some experience with overlapping dialog and movement in a more literal upstairs/downstairs on Robert Altman's "Gosford Park." Alexandre Desplat's music adds to the tense mood.

    The variegation that Gaghan presents is almost staggering, even more ethically complicated than a Graham Greene Cold War noir. This is the first film I've seen that illustrates the diversity of clashing Islamic cultures and interests, despite that I couldn't keep their interests or motives all quite straight. Though the English subtitles (which are commendably outlined in black for unusual legibility) wipe out some of the distinctions, we can infer that Iranians are speaking Farsi, Pakistanis' Urdu and others speaking Arabic, all with varying fluency and mutual cultural comprehension, let alone manipulators who can speak anything besides their native tongues. We've seen immigrants and guest workers in films critical of Western countries, but not the resentment-brewing conditions of badly treated non-citizens in the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, like the fictional one here which looks a lot like Dubai or Brunei, where clusters of modern skyscrapers contrast with Bedouin goat herders. It does help for background on the fascinating side plot of the radicalized young Arabs to see "Paradise Now" about Palestinian terrorists to explain particular details of their training.

    While each character is specifically set within a believable home and family setting, some are painted with too easy and broad strokes. While Alexander Siddig seems to have the monopoly on naively idealistic Arabs, as his similar character in "Kingdom of Heaven" against another Crusades, history is littered with the interim, modernizing liberal tragically caught between powerful forces. (Though the proliferation of Western-educated Arab intellectuals in movies is beginning to sound like all those Japanese generals in World War II movies who went to USC or whatever; at least he went to Oxford and not Harvard.)

    Matt Damon's un-Bourne-like energy analyst just sounds simplistic even when he's truth-telling, but we also see that he's already slid down the slippery slope of ethics in the crossing of his personal and professional lives. That so many of the oil and gas executives have Texas accents (superb Chris Cooper, Tim Blake Nelson, Robert Foxworth) does seem to say that the decades of business and political corruption there, as documented in Robert Caro's biography of LBJ, have simply been extended to a global scale.

    The film is also unusual in focusing on the role of lawyers negotiating the deals between companies and governments. While Christopher Plummer's Ivy League senior partner type has been seen as a shadowy force in countless paranoid thrillers, Jeffrey Wright is completely unpredictable and tightly wound, though the point of his relationship with his cynical alcoholic father isn't exactly clear except maybe as his conscience. We see before our eyes he goes from, as his mentor says, "a sheep into a lion."

    Most films have prosecutors like David Clennon's U.S. attorney as a hero against corruption, instead of being chillingly dismissed as "trust fund lawyers." But the script is so full of such epigrams, like "In this town, you're only innocent until you're investigated," that one character calls another on issuing them too brightly.

    While from the beginning I couldn't quite follow all the machinations around George Clooney's character, he is wonderful at transforming from his usual Cary Grant suave to harried, dedicated, mid-level bureaucrat who literally won't toe the Company line in a dangerous hierarchy that's shown to be a bit more competent than in real life, that reminded me both in the gut and guts of Russell Crowe's Wigand in the tobacco wars in "The Insider." It recalls how benign corrupt spooks looked in their personal lives, as there's much conversation here about houses, cars and college tuition. Indirectly, the film implicitly shows the dangers to Valerie Plame from her outing as a CIA operative, as families and personal connections are constantly used as threats and bargaining chips.

    Significantly, there is not a single mention amidst all these Mideast chicaneries, plots and plans of the Zionist entity, proving that pro or anti-Israel policies are smoke screens around the main draw -- oil.

    Movie-wise, these characters seem a lot like the gangsters and their conseglieres in "The Godfather" carving up Cuba and drug rights, let alone Gordon Gekko extolling "Greed is good" as the ultimate ideology, and fits right in with this year's other geo-political thrillers "The Constant Gardener" and "Lord of War," and those weren't even about natural resources. It works better than the re-make of "The Manchurian Candidate" because even though the focal point is a fictional country the issues are real, not science fiction.

    So does this make you ready to get out of your car and onto the train? Because until then, we'll still need lots of that oil from the Middle East.
    • noralee
    • Dec 10, 2005
    • Permalink

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • December 9, 2005 (United States)
    • Countries of origin
      • United States
      • United Arab Emirates
    • Official site
      • Warner Bros. (Japan)
    • Languages
      • English
      • Urdu
      • Arabic
      • Persian
      • French
      • Mandarin
    • Also known as
      • See No Evil
    • Filming locations
      • Casablanca, Morocco
    • Production companies
      • Warner Bros.
      • Participant
      • 4M
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $50,000,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $50,824,620
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $374,502
      • Nov 27, 2005
    • Gross worldwide
      • $93,974,620
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      2 hours 8 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • DTS
      • Dolby Digital
      • SDDS
    • Aspect ratio
      • 2.39 : 1

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