5. "Syriana" (2005): George Clooney deservedly won his first Academy Award for
this quietly powerful performance as Bob Barnes, a CIA agent dealing with the
labyrinthian entanglements of Big Oil. Inspired by Robert Bauer's book "See No
Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier
... more in the CIA's War on Terrorism" and
directed and written by Stephen Gaghan (who penned Steven Soderbergh's "Traffic"), the endlessly complicated "Syriana" offers an
often devastating take on the corrupting influence of global oil and the darker
aspects of American foreign policy. Within the film's four intertwining stories,
Clooney plays the determined yet tired CIA veteran Barnes on assignment in
Lebanon and Iran searching for terrorists in the Middle East. With a heaviness
not merely associated with his significant weight gain and burly beard, Clooney
imbues Barnes with sympathy and a knowing sense of danger — a danger this
intelligent man can't run away from (he'll eventually become a patsy). More
world-weary than we'd ever seen him and showing that a riper, grayed and paunchy
Clooney will work just fine (the actor has no need to worry about aging on
screen), he centered the tangled picture with his emotional intensity.
(Warner Bros. Pictures)Close
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