Syriana (2005) on Netflix
Prince Nasir Al-Subaai grants drilling rights to a Chinese company, and Connex Oil loses its Gulf fields. The merger that follows draws in lawyer Bennett Holiday and CIA officer Bob Barnes.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.8/10139,211 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes73%
Trailer
Plot summary
Bennett Holiday, a lawyer at Dean Whiting's Washington firm, is handed the job of convincing the Department of Justice that Connex Oil's merger with the smaller Killen breaks no antitrust rules. Connex needs it: Prince Nasir Al-Subaai, the Emir's heir, has sold his kingdom's gas drilling rights to a Chinese company. In Geneva, energy analyst Bryan Woodman attends a party at the Emir's Marbella estate, where a tragedy leads Prince Nasir to grant his firm oil interests and to take him on as economic advisor. Bob Barnes, a veteran CIA officer who has spent years on arms trafficking in the Middle East, is sent back to the region on an assignment involving the prince.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Syriana (2005)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- George Clooney suffered an accident on the set of Syriana that caused a brain injury, with complications from a punctured dura.
- Harrison Ford turned down the role of Bob Barnes, which went to George Clooney, and later said he had made a mistake; it was the second Stephen Gaghan-written part he declined, after Robert Wakefield in Traffic, which went to Michael Douglas.
- Syriana was filmed with five storylines, but the fifth, with Michelle Monaghan as a Miss USA involved with a rich Arab oilman, was cut when the film became too complicated; a role played by Greta Scacchi as Bob Barnes' wife was also cut before release.
- Censor authorities in parts of the Middle East cut scenes from Syriana showing foreigners being ill-treated, because they deemed the scenes insulting even though abuse of foreign workers was widespread.
- Moments after arriving in Beirut in 2002, Stephen Gaghan was taken from the airport blindfolded and hooded to meet Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who gave the writer an audience even though he had not asked for one.
- Before filming began, Stephen Gaghan persuaded Warner Bros. to give him an unlimited research budget and no deadline, and did his own legwork meeting oil traders in London and lawyers in Washington, D.C.
- Gaghan changed the names of real entities operating in the Middle East while keeping their place in the story: the film's Committee for the Liberation of Iran was based on the real Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
