Syriana

Syriana (2005) is a political thriller written and directed by Steven Gaghan — watch it online on iFILM. George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, and Chris Cooper play four men ground down by the same machine: the global oil trade and the governments that feed it.

Clooney is a CIA operative running missions he only half understands, increasingly aware that he's expendable. Damon plays an energy analyst whose personal tragedy drops him into the confidence of a reformist Middle Eastern prince — a dangerous place to be. Jeffrey Wright's Washington lawyer is asked to rubber-stamp a corporate oil merger, a job that turns out to carry its own quiet menace. And on the margins: a young Pakistani migrant worker, laid off from the oilfields and with nowhere left to turn. None of them can see the full picture. The script draws on the memoir of former CIA officer Robert Baer.

Clooney won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this role. Gaghan also wrote Traffic, and Syriana shares that film's fractured, morally uncomfortable structure — no heroes, no clean endings. Stream Syriana (2005) in full on iFILM.