Syriana (2005)

It looked so promising on the cover. George Clooney and Matt Damon being highly respected actors, the Academy Award it won for ‘Best Supporting Actor’ and the Sunday Express’ verdict that it “Demands and deserves to be re-watched”, so what went wrong? The movie basically shows the lives and perspectives of different people in the oil industry and how deception and greed play a part in it. I have to give it to the movie, it was worth watching to the bitter end where it causes your jaw to drop at how the movie finishes, but that was it really, save one bloody torture scene! So I asked myself: why didn’t I like this? It’s a political thriller but however different awesome camera angles they use it doesn’t make the movie very thrilling. The movie was just under two hours long, which I knew due the amount of times I looked at my DVD player, wishing it would end. But I think that the problem with this film is that they made it are too complicated for their own good, in trying to impress the audience they really confused it. If they made the dialogue understandable, some scenes shorter and some characters a bit more accessible then this would have been a gem. But unfortunately they didn’t, making this a very disappointing film. Should you watch it? Maybe. Should you watch it in FILMCLUB? Never.