If nothing else, Syriana gets an 'A' for ambition. It makes a series of statements on big oil companies, federal regulations, CIA involvement in the Middle East, how China's need for oil directly impact the rest of us, terrorism and suicide bombers. There is a lot going on in Syriana. Too much.

Stephen Gaghan, who wrote Traffic, takes a similar approach with Syriana, telling several overlapping stories that eventually come together in the end. On one hand, we have CIA operative Bob Baer (George Clooney), who has spent years in the Middle East and who accidentally may have sold a missile to the wrong people. On the other hand, you have Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), a father who uses the loss of his son to get the ear of the would-be Saudi emir, Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig). This emir is locked in a power struggle with his brother Prince Meshal (Akbar Kurtha) over who will succeed their father. On the other hand (technically, I know I've run out of hands, but I'm trying to convey just how many hands are stirring this plot), Nasir has struck a deal with a company who is in cahoots with the Chinese to sell some valuable oil wells. The executives of Connex, the Texas big oil guys (Chris Cooper, Peter Gerety) want to merge with their competitor but a government investigation threatens the merger. They hire Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) to get stay one step ahead of the investigators and report to them. The fourth and final hand belongs to a young Pakistani man who loses his oil drilling job as a result of all this corporate movement. Jobless and without direction, he ends up influenced by a radical Muslim sect. Is your head swimming yet? I know mine is.

No one can ever accuse Syriana of being dumbed down for the masses. It's a very intelligent movie. It's thought-provoking. It's filled with a great cast from the top liners through the supporting cast. What it isn't, is very entertaining. It spends so much time setting up the separate stories and meandering through them that it is hard to really get engaged in the story.

The characters fulfill their function but like the story, it's hard to connect with them. I guess that is part of the 'intelligent design' of Syriana. There are no saints. There are no sinners. There are just people with varying amounts of blood on their hands. Everyone is guilty of something.

The stories do come together nicely in the end, but it was too little too late, the tension and the build-up needed to start a lot sooner. If you must, rent it. As a rental, you can stop and start and break Syriana down into digestible chunks.