Syriana , a character-driven spy thriller about the political and financial machinations surrounding the international oil trade, is too taut for its own good. It’s one of those movies where the filmmakers deliberately leave out information so that the viewer is aware of the conspiracy swarming around but can’t quite figure out what it is and how each character is involved.

It reminded me of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown , which is in the same family as Syriana , except the 70’s classic dealt with the [local] implications of a [water] scandal rather than Syriana ‘s international/oil subject matter. But Chinatown , with its highly-respected script by Robert Towne, manages the conspiracy far more professionally, cloaking in it in the guise of film-noir with Jack Nicholson as the chief investigator.

Syriana instead takes the approach of Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic – no coincidence since Syriana ‘s writer/director Steven Gaghan was a co-writer of Traffic – following several seemingly disparate storylines and various characters of different nationality/class/profession all at once. This technique worked well in the sometimes overly didactic Traffic , but falls a little short here, mostly because of the difficulty cramming it all in during the 126 minute running time, 21 minutes shorter than that of Traffic. While the overall sense of the conspiracy is mostly clear by the end of the film, we’re not entirely sure how we and each character got there.

But perhaps this is just one of those movies that demand a second viewing (like, say, the first Mission: Impossible , which Robert Towne also wrote). Certainly all the other ingredients of the film are great: the acting (with good performances from George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, and Alexander Siddig - yes, there are no major female roles), the photography, the plot (when figured out), the subject matter, etc. Yet, I still have this feeling that this movie should’ve been great and came very close, especially when challenging movies with politically relevant subject matters are so hard to come by, and even more so from a major studio.