Syriana: Dir Stephen Gaghan. Star: George Clooney. 2005

Occasionally Hollywood attempts to do justice to a complex story with a political edge. In Syriana it  succeeds in pulling it off. Helped by the presence of George Cloney, who brings some vision and focus to what could have been a rambling overblown turkey, the film deals with the geo-politics of oil.

At no point (until the very end) does it patronise its audience, but assumes that the viewer is capable of following five interweaving stories – it demands that you pay attention to the narratives to follow what is going on, but that attention is rewarded with a picture of the complexity of the power games that literally oil the wheels of our society – and a messy dirty business it is.

The film includes one of the most succinct expositions of peak oil yet seen in any medium, but is more focused on exposing the corruption and exploitation inherent in business of grabbing the lion’s share of a finite natural resource.

One final word of caution – if you do go to see it then get up and leave when you think that the story has reached a natural end, this will spare you the slightly mawkish, obviously tagged-on, ‘happy’ ending which Hollywood seems to feel is needed to insult the audience.