Syriana

Syriana

Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Siddig

Director: Stephen Gaghan

The film: That George Clooney won only the best supporting actor award for his key role in Syriana speaks volumes about two things. First, Clooney's turn as renegade CIA agent Bob Barnes is one of many sparkling performances in an ensemble piece. More importantly, the cast are just there as faces to prop up Syriana's raison d'etre: liberal Hollywood's grand statement against the untrammelled greed of American enterprise and, as actor Jeffrey Wright says in one of the featurettes on this DVD, 'the footprints we leave on the rest of the world'.

In one of the film's defining scenes, a fixer facing judicial indictment (played by Tim Blake Nelson) rants: 'Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm ... corruption is why we win.' It's as much fiery sardonicism about capitalist cynicism as a despairing cry about how the complacent comforts of American affluence is largely at the expense of morality and virtue.

Clooney's Barnes (below) is loosely based on the experiences of Robert Baer, a former CIA operative with much experience of messing up Middle Eastern geopolitics in the name of America. He represents the turbulent conscience, his initial missile-selling, enemy-obliterating forays gradually giving way to distaste of how Arab lives, from princes to paupers, are sacrificed in the name of America.