Movie · 2005 · Drama, Thriller · 2h 8m · R · English
Curator score: 4.5/10 (180K ratings)
Everything is connected.
Overview
The Middle Eastern oil industry is the backdrop of this tense drama, which weaves together numerous story lines. Bennett Holiday is an American lawyer in charge of facilitating a dubious merger of oil companies, while Bryan Woodman, a Switzerland-based energy analyst, experiences both personal tragedy and opportunity during a visit with Arabian royalty. Meanwhile, veteran CIA agent Bob Barnes uncovers an assassination plot with unsettling origins.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.5/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.35/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 73%
Metacritic: 76
TMDB: 6.4/10
Director
Stephen Gaghan
Production
Participant, 4M, Section Eight, FilmWorks, MID Foundation, Warner Bros. Pictures
Cast
George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, Amanda Peet, William Hurt, Christopher Plummer, Alexander Siddig, Kayvan Novak, Amr Waked, Robert Foxworth, Nicky Henson, Nicholas Art, Steven Hinkle, Daisy Tormé, Peter Gerety, Richard Lintern, Mazhar Munir, Jocelyn Quivrin, Shahid Ahmed
Curator Review
Verdict
A dense, adult geopolitical thriller that rewards patience more than plot clarity. It’s ambitious, topical, and sharply acted, even if its interlocking storylines can feel diffuse or didactic.
Best for
Viewers who like political thrillers with real-world stakes
Fans of ensemble dramas and cross-cutting narratives
People interested in oil politics, intelligence agencies, and corporate corruption
Audiences who don’t mind ambiguity and a demanding structure
Skip if
You want a clean, easy-to-follow thriller
You prefer action-forward spy movies
You’re looking for emotional warmth or a hopeful resolution
You get frustrated by films that prioritize systems over individual arcs
Overview
Syriana is the kind of studio-backed political drama that feels almost extinct now: serious, talky, globally minded, and willing to make the machinery of power the main character. Stephen Gaghan builds a web of oil deals, intelligence operations, and personal compromises that can be hard to track in the moment, but the film’s larger argument lands clearly: modern geopolitics is a system of mutually reinforcing corruption, not a series of isolated bad actors.
Worth noting
What makes it work is the texture. The film has a bruised, lived-in quality, and the cast gives it weight even when the narrative becomes deliberately knotty. George Clooney, Matt Damon, and Jeffrey Wright help anchor a movie that is more interested in consequence than exposition, and more interested in institutions than heroes.
Bottom line
It’s not a comfortable watch, and its complexity can feel uneven rather than elegant. But as a post-9/11 American political thriller, it remains unusually serious and unusually willing to connect boardrooms, embassies, and battlefields without simplifying any of them.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Matthew Christman (4★) · 658 likes
I don't care that nobody seems to understand the plot. I don't care that it's didactic. I don't care that "serious people" find the geopolitical analysis puerile. I love Stephen Gaghan's Syriana because it's the only American film to seriously and thoughtfully engage with the "war on terror." Every other Hollywood product either exploits the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an easy background for action scenes or to make rather banal points about the traumatic effects of war on… more I don't care that nobody seems to understand the plot. I don't care that it's didactic. I don't care that "serious people" find the geopolitical analysis puerile. I love Stephen Gaghan's Syriana because it's the only American film to seriously and thoughtfully engage with the "war on terror." Every other Hollywood product either exploits the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an easy background for action scenes or to make rather banal points about the traumatic effects of war on… more
Ben Hibburd (4.5★) · 244 likes
Seeing all the two-star reviews for this film on this site has left me feeling despondent. "Syriana" is one of the best films I've seen attempting to tackle the multifaceted fuckery of the CIA and the US state department's economic colonisation of the Middle East post-9/11.
This film, much like HBO's "The Wire," looks at almost every level of the so-called 'War on Terror.' The film focuses on several loosely interlocking stories from a CIA agent played by George Clooney… more
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (3★) · 88 likes
Okay, so apparently George Clooney already had won an Oscar for his acting work and I didn't know.... now, I feel like my whole cinema being is a complete lie...
But seriously, I believe this movie came right or a year later before "Munich" came out. In this regard, its clear Spielberg's true political thriller is way much superior to this one in many aspects, both technical and acting wise.
That's not to say this is not a bad movie.… more
Xeremy Hall 🟠🟢🔵 (3★) · 73 likes
I can understand why some people tend to score Syriana low. There's a lot of moving parts and it can be hard to follow at times. But I think that Stephen Gaghan deserves a little credit here because he attempted to sum up the complexity of the Middle-Eastern oil industry in a post-911 world into a 2 hour and 7 minute movie. 2005 was a crazy time to be alive. There was a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq,… more I can understand why some people tend to score Syriana low. There's a lot of moving parts and it can be hard to follow at times. But I think that Stephen Gaghan deserves a little credit here because he attempted to sum up the complexity of the Middle-Eastern oil industry in a post-911 world into a 2 hour and 7 minute movie. 2005 was a crazy time to be alive. There was a war in Afghanistan, a war in Iraq,… more