Sheik, Rattle and Roll

George Clooney gets heavy in Stephen Gaghan’s wild oil-industry thriller ‘Syriana.’

There were more than a few moments in the complex, fascinating “Syriana”
As he did in his Oscar-winning screenplay for “Traffic,” Gaghan shuffles multiple stories, often continents apart, only gradually unveiling how they’re connected. There’s an Arabic-speaking CIA agent left out in the cold by his handlers in Washington, played by a bearded, heavyset, deglamorized George Clooney. There’s an ambitious Washington lawyer (Jeffrey Wright) investigating a questionable merger between two Texas oil firms