When Danny Dalton, an oilman and saliva monster played by Tim Blake Nelson, learns of his impending corruption charges, he sets off a glorious Fourth Of July fireworks show, a breathless string of insults about “some trust-fund prosecutor” and “some two-bit Congressman from nowhere,” all in caustic celebration of the land of opportunity. Everyone in Syriana profits to some degree off of the deadly unrest in the Middle East, yet Dalton finds himself the sacrificial lamb to the American ideal of “justice”—which, in the no-so-subtle Syriana, is the justice department itself. Writer Stephen Gaghan is so fluent in Sorkinese, he even drops allusions to authorities like Milton Friedman and the Nobel Prize with the implied “‘nuff said.” Then he gets to the meat of his argument: Corruption isn’t an aberration. Corruption is the American way. “We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it,” Dalton says. We the rich and powerful, anyway.
