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Given Stephen Gaghan’s screenplay for Traffic, it’s no secret that
Gaghan can handle multiple narratives – and one of the joys of
Gaghan’s direction and screenplay for Syriana is his expectation
that the audience can and will follow his lead. Just as Traffic was
an unflinching exposé of the many human lives caught in the
so-called “drug war,” so is Syriana direct and head-on, a
steady-gazed film about the oil industry’s global tentacles. A
scathing indictment of the means utilized by both the Muslin and
Christian worlds to secure oil and its resultant wealth, Syriana
does little to inspire hope that the current polarized state of the
planet will end any time soon. At times, Gaghan’s screenplay evokes
a disillusion similar to Watergate-era films such as Three Days of
the Condor or The Conversation, and at Syriana’s end, it is easy
enough to feel as if nothing has changed – not just since Nixon, but
since Machiavelli. |
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