Drama Archive

Not really a spy movie as such, Syriana does feature a spy as one of its central characters. Bob Barnes, played by a bearded and slightly podgy George Clooney, is an aging C.I.A. operative with knowledge of Middle East affairs. When an assassination attempt on an Arab Prince goes awry Barnes is tortured, and when he’s turned loose he’s used as a scapegoat by the C.I.A. for the botched mission.

Now that may sound like a regular spy story but it’s just one strand of Syriana’s web of intrigue, that encompasses big business, terrorism and the Middle Eastern way of life. It’s a film packed full of political ideas, perhaps too full, there are so many strands here that it’s at times hard to keep track of them all. There are moments when you’re left a little bemused as to how such-and-such got to so-and-so and while it’s nice to have a film that doesn’t baby it’s audience, filling in everything they could possibly need to know about a character, the film jumps around so much that you may miss important information as you try and get your bearings.

Writer/director Stephen Gaghan won an Oscar for his Traffic script which had a similar multi-character storyline but for me it worked far better in the earlier film. Syriana feels far preachier than Traffic, concentrating as much on the message as on the story, rather than let one flow from the other. It’s a film that for all its depth still has clearly defined bad guys – the American oil companies, the C.I.A. (who, as one character observes, is just another multi-billion dollar business).

Sean Connery gets the abbey habit as the very Holmesian William of Baskerville (even his name is a nod to the greatest of fictional detectives) in Jean-Jacques Annaud’s film about murder in a Fourteenth Century monastery, based on the novel by Umberto Eco.

Rarely has history seemed as grim as it does here, this isn’t the fairytale history of Arthurian-style movies, this is a cold, dirty place that’s about as welcoming as a sleepover at the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family home. Some of the residents could give Leatherface a run for his money as well, with the flagellating monk who looks like a fat sweaty version of Uncle Fester topping the list, along with the always welcome Ron Perlman as the loopy hunchback, Salvatore.

Yet for such an outwardly bleak film its script has a wonderfully playful sense of humour. “That’s elementary, my dear Adso” states Connery early on, in another reference to Doyle’s famous sleuth, and he gets some great dialogue with his apprentice Adso (a youthful stand-in for Dr. Watson, played with admirable restraint by a very young Christian Slater ) including a Bond-like quip when one of the brothers turns up dead, stuffed headfirst in a barrel.

Connery may be the main focus but there’s hardly any member of the cast that doesn’t seem perfectly suited for the part. Perlman steals every scene he’s in, and that’s saying something when you’re up against an old pro like Sean, while F. Murray Abraham is hissably bad as Bernardo Gui the Inquisition’s answer to Moriarty.