Glad if I was of any help. And I think we see eye to eye on Syriana. Actually most of us here seem to. Yeah, this is a hard movie for me to rate. I'm almost tempted to make it one of the year's best ten US movies, because I like this kind of stuff so much, but I don't think it's successful enough. I'm waiting for some final 2005 late release revelations to give me ten good ones, including some serous stuff. The always provocative Armond White of The New York Press recently wrote of Munich--
Munich is a reminder of the morality that mere politics would have us forget...
Whaaa??? I wish movies would give us more "mere" politics and set the "morality" to one side for a bit while we figure out what is actually going on. Syriana takes that path.