Syriana

A movie should run as long as it takes to tell its story, no more or less. Syriana is notoriously challenging to keep up with, but if you've hung in there for 12o minutes you deserve to be given an extra 30 that properly connect the dots. How is it that Clooney won the Oscar when, after the CIA cuts him loose, none of Bob's actions add up? Too many pieces of his performance in the final act seem to have been cut for length.

What the heck is he doing flagging down the prince's convoy out in the middle of the gee-dee Saudi desert? What does he hope to achieve — or is he just a shaken screwjob? I'm sure the screenwriter knows, but we don't, and at that point we ought to. We know Bob feels betrayed, but are we really to believe, based on what survived the cutting room, that the Agency's true agenda comes to him as a shock, or that suddenly he feels such obligation toward the prince he's never met? More story please.

Some have praised the film for leaving the viewer as bewildered as the characters by the marvelous snarl of energy politics. I do admire that quality of the screenplay, effective as it is in the overall cast of relations, and so am all the more critical of the mishandled Clooney storyline; where the pleasure of breathless bewilderment sours on suspicion of a cheat.