Syriana
Overview
Geopolitics
Geopolitics, from Greek Γη and Πολιτική in broad terms, is a theory that describes the relation between politics and territory whether on local or international scale....
thriller film written and directed by Stephen Gaghan
Stephen Gaghan
Stephen Gaghan is an American screenwriter and director. He is noted for writing the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic, based on a Channel 4 series, for which he won the Academy Award, as well as Syriana which he wrote and directed.-Childhood and education:Born in either Louisville,...
, and executive produced by George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
, who also stars in the film with an ensemble cast
Ensemble cast
An ensemble cast is made up of cast members in which the principal actors and performers are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance and screen time in a dramatic production. This kind of casting became more popular in television series because it allows flexibility for writers to focus on...
. Gaghan's screenplay is loosely adapted
Film adaptation
Film adaptation is the transfer of a written work to a feature film. It is a type of derivative work.A common form of film adaptation is the use of a novel as the basis of a feature film, but film adaptation includes the use of non-fiction , autobiography, comic book, scripture, plays, and even...
from Robert Baer
Robert Baer
Robert "Bob" Booker Baer is an American author and a former CIA case officer assigned to the Middle East. He is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and has contributed to Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Baer is a frequent commentator and author about issues related to...
's memoir See No Evil
See No Evil (book)
See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War Against Terrorism is a 2003 memoir by Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer in the Directorate of Operations. Baer begins with his upbringing in the US and Europe and continues with a tour of his CIA experiences across the globe...
. The film focuses on petroleum politics
Petroleum politics
Petroleum politics have been an increasingly important aspect of diplomacy since the rise of the petroleum industry in the Middle East in the early 20th century...
, and the global influence of the oil industry, whose political, economic, legal, and social effects are experienced by a Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
operative (George Clooney
George Clooney
George Timothy Clooney is an American actor, film director, producer, and screenwriter. For his work as an actor, he has received two Golden Globe Awards and an Academy Award...
), an energy analyst (Matt Damon
Matt Damon
Matthew Paige "Matt" Damon is an American actor, screenwriter, and philanthropist whose career was launched following the success of the film Good Will Hunting , from a screenplay he co-wrote with friend Ben Affleck...
), a Washington attorney (Jeffrey Wright), and a young unemployed Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i migrant worker (Mazhar Munir
Mazhar Munir
Mazhar Munir is a television and film actor. Before co-starring in the 2005 movie Syriana, he appeared in three British television shows: The Bill, Mile High, and Doctors.-Biography:...
) in an Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
country in the Persian Gulf.
Quotations
I want you to take him from his hotel, drug him, put him in the front of a car, and run a truck into it at 50 mph.
Beirut, it's great! It's like the Paris of the Middle East.
Great. How much for my other kid?
[to his father, the emir, about his brother, Prince Meshal Al-Subaai] He's barely qualified to run a brothel, much less a country!
[to his political followers] When a country has 5 percent of the world's population but spends 50 percent of the world's military spending, that country's persuasive power is in decline.
Dean Whiting: [to Prince Meshal Al-Subaai] Are you a king? Can you tell me what you want?