Three Snouts Up for Syriana on DVD

(:)(:)(:) out of a possible five snouts up for Syriana, executive produced by George Clooney. I was disappointed in this movie.

I expected a sort of freshness and honesty or something shocking or a sort of critical quality that was beyond what I had seen in other Hollywood international suspense movies--didn't get it.

I also expected a level of sophistication and complicated intrigue that went out of fashion a couple of decades ago. You know with the movies that you had to follow really closely to be able to know what was going on--also didn't get it.

What I got was a confusing, and largely not intriguing, set of interlocking plot lines, sprinkled with a heavy dose of didacticism. Rather than keeping me on my toes, no one was taking any chances that I wouldn't grok the interlocking interests of big business, oil, U.S. Government and middle east princes--thanks for the education, Clooney.

I'm sure there are people who learned things about the lengths to which the US government might go to protect American business interests, but I wasn't really one of them.

I'm sure there are people who cared whether the middle eastern princes lived or died, and who succeeded whom, but I wasn't really one of them.

I'm sure there are people who understood why we had to learn so much about the Clooney character's wife and son, the missing missle, Matt Damon's travails (not to mention the virginal pakistani boys) only to have all this information rendered largely if not completely irrelevent in the last few minutes of the film, but I wasn't one of them.

Because of my love for George Clooney, from his politics to the tilt of his head (my neighbor maintains that there is a national network of straight men that are "queer for Clooney"), and an inexplicable Matt Damon fetish, I am granting this DVD one more snout than it may deserve.

Otherwise, I might suggest that you wait for it to come out on toilet paper.