Word: clooneys
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...most reductive form, Syriana is about a businessman (Matt Damon) mixed up with oil sheiks, a poor Pakistani (Mazhar Munir) desperate to give meaning to his life and death, a CIA agent (George Clooney) on the trail of terrorists and a very big oil deal...
...This is Clooney doing a De Niro, growing a beard and cocooning himself in flab. The actor must want to prove that his star quality is more than just Cary Grant looks and a stud's sly aplomb. It is. Here he seduces the viewer into looking closer, to catch the eye glint of skeptical intelligence, the interior burden that a samurai for the CIA bears with weary grace, and for reasons he may have forgotten or never known...
Gaghan relies on Clooney's agnostic heroism to lure viewers into his maze. When they get there, they will find 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...
...dined with men now suspected of killing former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, and sipped cappuccino in the kitchen of former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle. Being a guy from Hollywood was often all it took to get people talking. "Steve got to do some amazing things," says Clooney, who is also Syriana's executive producer. "Other screenwriters probably want to kidnap him out of jealousy...
...final film, the plot, rather, plots are wholly invented and the names have been changed. Clooney's character is called Bob Barnes, although his expertise and undercurrent of melancholy are pure Baer. (Barnes' prodigiously sarcastic son Robby is modeled on Charlotte Baer.) But the fruits of Gaghan's research are obvious. Syriana's characters--from would-be Arab princes to American oil traders, CIA agents to terrorists--behave in exquisitely detailed and complicated ways. They cross paths and challenge one another's assumptions, just as Gaghan's were challenged. Of course, Syriana is entertainment first and foremost. It just happens...