Patchwork Quilts Made Out of George Clooney's Beard and Matt Damon's Dimples

Hi there. Names Freebone. First time writer, long time reader. So I'm not exactly sure what department I had to cover on the BG. I think it was I who was to assume the mantle of move critic. True I do spend an exorbiant amount of time on my tucus, but I don't know that that qualifies me for anything. Still, since I watch a lot of films anyways, and my wife tires of my film diatribes, a new audience is just what I need. We begin our first film review in a far off land on the sand dunes of the Middle East...

Syriana is a story about greed, power, and the abuses of power. Set in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, the film follows several story lines that all convene into one. The film jumps around more than a middle school kid without his "medicine", so I'll try to be as succint as possible:
Shady deals between U.S. oil companies and a country in the Middle East are suspected of foul play. They are investigated. Meanwhile, a fat George Clooney plays a CIA agent who is at the tail end of his career trying to make sense of it all and not get killed in the porcess. Confused? Good, you should be.
I rented Syriana via Netflix (both a boon and a curse that Netflix is) and I'm glad I did. Multiple times during the viewing I had to rewind it and play it again. There's a lot of fast dialogue and it's sometimes hard to keep track of all the different story lines. The film was directed by Stephen Gaghan, who also penned the screenplay for Traffic, a film about drug trafficking (get it?). If you're at all familiar with that movie, you should have a good sense of how Syriana unfolds.
Now there are several things that I like about Syriana with not much to complain about. The intent of the film (I feel) is not to be preachy about our dependency on oil. It's not exactly a secret that the U.S. is very dependent on foriegn oil. The film's main goal is to explore the issue while showing our (U.S.) dirty underbellies, while showing some of humanness in their (Middle East) world. It's pretty apolitical in my judgement. Which may be a problem depending on how you like your movies. If you like things to blow up, the good guy to get the girl, and the bad guys to go to jail, then you might not like this. It's kind of like one of those old quilts that's supposed to look like some type of picture, but you have no idea what picture it looks like, so you give up and just use the dang quilt becuase you're cold and your grandmas house has no heating in the upstairs because the house was built in the 1910's and it would cost too much to add more heating to the frigid upstairs. It's definately a thinking mans movie, and I know all here on the Breakfast Gravy staff love to think. (I should have thought of a better closing line, that sucked).
I give Syriana: 4 out of 5 Freebones.