I've been wanting to see this movie for the longest time and only recently did I get the chance. All I have to say is WOW! It is a brilliant piece of work mostly because it is based on true experiences. Although the movie was written by the same guy who wrote Traffic, he based most of the movie on a book (See No Evil) which follows the life of a CIA operataive.
The movie begins with George Clooney a CIA agent who is later hired to assasinate a future Arab king. America basically wants this king dead because he gave away the lucrative oil-drilling rights to a Chinese company and refused to do any futher deals with America. While in the middle east George Clooney's character Bob Barnes trades some missles with an acquaintance but becomes horrified to learn that a missle he traded may have fallen into the hands of a terrorist.
The big American corporation who lost the drilling rights to the middle east (Connex) descides to merge with a smaller corporation (Killen) in order to get drilling rights to what can be considered the second best natural oil reserve in Kazakhstan. However American officials must look into this merger before it can be legalized. So Connex hires a lawyer, Bennett Holiday who has the dubious task of finding 'shady' business practices and covering them up before American officials find out about it.
In addition to these two major plotlines a smaller yet thought-provoking story parrallels the movie about a group of young, unemployed Pakistani boys who find there way into radical Islam and later become suicide bombers.
With so many stories and plotlines to follow my favorite part of the movie is a conversation had by Killen CEO Danny Dalton and lawyer Bennett Holiday. Danny Dalton (insert any major CEO's name here) explains his policy towards buisness by stating, "Corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm! Corruption is why you and I are prancin' around in here instead of fightin' over scraps of meat out in the street. Corruption is why we win."
I think this might be one of the best films I have ever seen. It is not an easy movie to follow but if you have the time and patience to watch it I highly recomend it.
10 comments:
Sounds interesting. The only thing working against it is George Clooney, hate em. But I'll give it a chance Pix and put it on my Netflix this week.
Joy I to hate George's pompous demeanor which he displays in most of his movies but trust me this one is different. It probably has to do with the fact that this movie is more serious from the fluff films he is best known for doing.
And if that doesn't convince you to watch it there is a brutal torture scene that involves George Clooney.
i saw this pix. there is no way i could explain it as well as you did. it was really hard for me to follow. seriously, my 12 year old brother and his friends had to explain the matrix to me and i still didn't get it!
I had a hard time following it too! Most of the time I had to stop and rewind certain parts of the movie to fully understand what was happening.
I think the main problem with this film is that it jumbles up the complex lives and stories of each character all together. It would have made a much better mini-series.
Yeah, I've heard about this torture scene, and I'm going to have to pass. I can't watch that kind of thing.
This is the performance for which Clooney won his Oscar and gave that speech which he intended to be self-depricating and instead was smug.
He almost always comes off sounding smug doesn't he? Anyways the torture scene had me squealing it was really appalling.
Not necessarily Ffluer, it is only loosely based on that book. Although I would not put it past America to do something like that I think the coruption between the big oil companies is based on some facts. The rest is sort of story was embellished. It's a great movie to watch if you can get past the torture scene.
between this and good night and good luck, george definitely earned his oscar. and that takes alot for me to say, since i always want to punch him in his smug face.
but seriously, this movie is great.
It's still on my shortlist. Great review!!
Thanks Flix its a great movie I am pretty sure you will like it.
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