Movie Review - Syriana

Here's what I like about mixed-up movies like Traffic and Syriana: they get you thinking. Here's what I don't like: they have no redeeming value. Christine and I watched Syriana last night. It took two hours to watch, but I think I can pass along the message in about two seconds. Ready?

There's trouble in the Middle East.

If that's a surprise to you, then maybe you should watch Syriana (or the national news). Otherwise, don't bother. I think there was a political message (oil companies=bad, republicans=bad, U.S. involvement in the Middle East=bad) but it was hard to care much about that because the story was so miserable. This is a movie like Cider House Rules in which everyone is a victim of his/her circumstance and no one rises above their circumstance. This is a story completely without virtue, meaning or beauty. It raises important and complex questions to be sure, but it does so while holding no hope for their resolution. It sheds light on a difficult political, religious, economic, and cultural situtation, but it does so while blending in disjointed, senseless misery. (I imagine at one point the writers said to one another: "We're not making the situation in the Middle East seem as bad as it should. We want the viewer to feel really bad about foreign oil and the like. Let's electrocute a six-year-old in an accident! Not because it makes sense. Just because we want this to be uncomfortable.)
Syriana has its points of good political philosophy. There are fleeting scenes, meant to be poignant, I think, in which Muslims wonder at Hollywood and capitalism. I liked those 30 seconds. The rest came off like a collaboration between Stephen King and Richard Engel.
I'd rather watch either.