China's economy is growing, but not as fast as it could because they can't get all the oil they need - I'm proud of that fact.

Caution: I sort of wave my hands at spoilers.

Syriana is one of these movies that shows us many different storylines without actually cluing us in on how they're related. Eventually we mostly figure it out, but it's all kind of a tenuous thing.

This is a strnge movie to watch. It's not that I couldn't figure out what was happening, that was always clear. A few times I got confused, but mostly it was clear who the characters were, who they worked for, what their job was, what they were trying to do, and what they were saying to each other. The problem was I typically had no idea what it meant in the scheme of the movie or the other events I'd seen in the other storylines.

The storylines are, roughly: a CIA agent, his bosses at the CIA, an energy consultant, the royal family of a small oil rich but otherwise poor nation, a corporate attorney investigating a questionable oil related business deal, and some migrant workers who work at an oil installation in the mideast. That's a lot of stories, and a lot of characters to keep track of, and as you'd expect they don't overlap much.

By the end I'd sort of gotten it, but this movie isn't the kind of movie that has a clear thesis statement or message. It's there, but I didn't feel like it was forced on me at all. When I go out looking for it, the message I see is that there are lots of interests and forces invovled in big money issues (like oil) and decisions aren't always made by who we think they're made by and in the way we hope they would be made. All kinds of interests and groups can intervene in unexpected and unorthodox ways.

Vagueness about what goes on in the movie aside, it was great to watch. Part of that was trying to figure out why all the things that are happening will prove to be important (one of my favorite pasttimes in watching movies like this is trying to figure out what clever gimmick the writers have for connecting up the stories) but most of it was the skill the movie was made with. It doesn't linger on one thing too long, and each storyline is always interesting. I don't remember being disappointed when leaving the "cool" storyline to spend more time with the "boring" one - a typically problem with movies of this structure.

This movie isn't for everyone. It has lots of vagueness in it, and sort of waves its hands at what's happening. But if you can deal with that, I think it's a very interesting thing to watch unfold.

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