Directed by: Stephen Gaghan

Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet, Jeffrey Wright, Christopher Plummer, Chris Cooper and William Hurt

Rated: R (for violence and adult language) Running time: 125 minutes

Best suited for: Those who view America as a ruthless world antagonist

Least suited for: Those who view America as a guilt-free protagonist Acorn’s Rating Guide:

There’s a new villain in Hollywood, and this one wears a Stetson. He’s the Texas oilman, and he’s hellbent on ruling the oiladdicted, gas-guzzling world.

Apparently there are only two types of Americans left in the world, those who perceive their gas tanks as half full and those who perceive them half empty. While “Syriana” attempts to cater to both the optimists and the pessimists, its message is fairly bleak: In this country we’re spoiled and complacent— but unabashedly ruthless when it comes to ensuring our own creature comforts.

George Clooney plays a CIA operative who’s cat-and-moused throughout the Middle East for 20 years. Matt Damon plays an idealistic analyst who backs Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Alexander Siddig) to succeed his ailing father and rule an oil-laden, albeit fictional, emirate in the Persian Gulf. Jeffrey Wright plays a Washington lawyer who helps to instigate a sleight-of-hand that allows a corporate oil merger to take place, affecting politics half a world away.

When Prince Nasir Al-Subaai is set up for assassination—a gaggle of Texas oilmen preferring that his younger, less idealistic brother take the throne—“Syriana” roils with tension. By the end of the film Clooney’s character, Damon’s, and many others, collide in a kind of cosmic culmination of events that began in plush and cozy boardrooms, well out of harm’s way.

At times “Syriana’s” plot can be both confusing and complicated. This is one film where close attention pays off. The only problem is, for a while, it’s hard to tell the players without a scorecard.

Frankly, “Syriana” would have been a better story if some of those vignettes had ended up on the cutting-room floor, if the established characters had been more committed to the heart of the story. We learn, for instance, that Clooney’s character is having teenage-son angst, Damon’s is battling a family tragedy and Wright’s dad is an alcoholic, but none of these revelations move the plot forward.

“Syriana” is one of a new breed of films that asks its audience not only to understand the enemy (assuming, of course, that Islam’s leaders are the potential enemy), but also to empathize. And in that regard, “Syriana” is moderately successful. The Texas oil barons come across as amoral and greed-driven, able to manipulate America’s political machinery. They keep the oil from flowing and simultaneously keep the Middle East in upheaval. The Arabs in power––who cannot be bought or swayed by our thirst for oil––are, in one fashion or another, silenced.

Are we, the filmgoer, being emotionally manipulated here? Without question. And while there’s a scarcity of political implication, this type of political thriller undeniably fuses with today’s headline news. In my opinion, films like “Syriana” are far more effective in their political clout than, say, a trivial Michael Moore farce that cares not how it muddies reality. “Syriana” may cagily influence our sense of right and wrong, but it does so well enough to leave the viewer feeling uneasy over how we’re playing the game, and to what end.

Two-thirds of the world sees America as “the bad guys.” After viewing “Syriana” one can begin to understand why.

In a nutshell: Stephen Gaghan directs a tense, complicated political thriller that weaves and veers its way through a series of vignettes that depict our addiction to foreign oil. There are perhaps too many independent stories—the film occasionally gets lost in its own velocity— but the outcome is powerful and the message is clear: Oil is worth controlling—whatever the cost.