Syriana

"A film that takes numerous risks and thrives on them all."

"Syriana has a lot of big, important things to say about big, important things, and it says them with a sense of urgency."

"Intelligent, political, incensed, timely, and appropriately cynical."

"It's hard to get passionately swept away by a movie when you're struggling continually to figure out who's doing what to whom and why."

"Watch closely and listen carefully during Syriana because Stephen Gaghan's movie is that rarity: a thinking person's drama."

"You may need a whiteboard and marker to follow it."

"You'll come away exhausted, but also exhilarated."

"There is a weird absence of both dramatic heat and political light here."

"The disorientation is purely cosmetic."

"Syriana is an American movie that reaches out beyond itself. Watching it made me feel hopeful - a rare sensation in a cinema."

"A weighty and deeply intriguing look at the many-tentacled beast that is the international oil industry. Wide-ranging and restlessly probing, Stephen Gaghan's second directorial effort uses the same mosaic storytelling technique as in his Oscar-winning screenplay for "Traffic.""

"It aims to be a great deal more than a standard geopolitical thriller and thereby succeeds in being one of the best geopolitical thrillers in a very long time."

"A gripping and fascinating tale of political intrigue that spans three continents, its focus trained on the volatile Middle East. It's a global portrait of danger, deception and disillusionment, with no dearth of human casualties."

""Syriana" is exciting, fascinating, absorbing, diabolical and really quite brilliant, but I'm afraid it inspires reviews that are not helpful. The more you describe it, the more you miss the point. It is not a linear progression from problem to solution. It is all problem. The audience enjoys the process, not the progress."