It is a political thriller that deals with the Middle East, corruption in the global oil industry, American power play as well as terrorism.

The film has multiple narrations and sub plots interweaved together to make the whole story. The main characters are Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) a modern day heir to an oil rich kingdom, Bryanwoodman (Matt Damon) a Geneva based oil analyst and his wife (Amanda Peet), Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) is  a high powered Washington lawyer and Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer) is the head of the law firm, Bob Barnes (George Clooney) is CIA agent stationed in Middle East to carry out an assassination plot and Wasim (Mazhar Munir) a young Pakistani migrant worker employed in the oil refinery and Jimmy Pope (Chris Cooper) an executive of an oil company located in Texas.

Western educated Prince Nasir awarded the oil drilling rights in his kingdom to a new Chinese company and it was a great blow to the Texas oil giant Connex, who in turn decided to seek a merger with a smaller company Killen owned by Jimmy Pope. Killen has recently won the drilling rights in Kazakhstan. The Justice Department suspected some illegal activities in the merger proposal. Prince Nasir also asked the Geneva based energy trader to maximize the oil profits so that he will have some bucks to carry out some fast reforms in his country.

Dean Whiting's law firm has been hired to guide the merger and handle all the legal problems and get the required clearance from the Justice Department. Mr. Whiting assigned the hot shot lawyer Bennett Holiday to handle the case who in turn worked on it to find enough scapegoats to blame and get the clearance.

In the mean time CIA agent Bob Barnes is stationed in the Middle East to carry out the assassinations of two arms dealers in Tehran. Once he has finished that assignment successfully, his next job is the assassination of Prince Nasir.

The final plot involves a young Pakistani migrant worker Wasim and his father who are laid off from Prince Nasir's oil refinery due to the change in the drilling contract that went to the Chinese. A militant Muslim cleric from the local madrassa encouraged Wasim to become a fundamentalist who in turn emerged as a suicide bomber.

The talented director Stephen Gaghan skillfully put together a complicated tale that involves real world issues. He touches issues like fundamentalism, capitalism, world wide corruption in the high level, CIA operations, Middle East policies of the U.S. government, complex structure of the Arab world as well as price manipulations by the oil producing countries. He presents a group of talented cast and reveals the complexities  of the world we are living in as well as the greed and misuse of power. He is trying to deliver a message to the world that the sky rocketing oil consumption is creating too much havoc in the world and it is high time to look into alternate energy sources and mass public transportation.

The movie has a great cast and wonderful acting. It has too many sub plots squeezed into two hours of film and it should have been better as a group of mini series. The Cinematography is very good and the film was shot in many locations like New York, Los Angeles, London, Dubai, Kuwait and Cairo. The movie makes you wonder what is happening in the oil industry.

We rate this movie GOOD.