Okay, it’s flawed, definitely. I think there’s a lot that could’ve been done to make this movie better.

I disagree with some earlier entries written about it. I think there was plenty of character development, given that you can’t really make a character-driven movie that is plotted this way – unless you make it a miniseries. It was a bit hard to notice because the plot was foremost, but it was obvious to me that the main sympathetic characters were not just “stock”. Some of them had (at least) conflicting interests, internal warring, etc.

I did not feel that the movie gave the impression that the rich and powerful are all to blame. Rather, I really felt convicted as a relatively ignorant consumer of oil. Certainly, I was appalled at the amount of power and money being thrown around. But I felt that the implicit point (not explicitly stated in the movie, that I remember) was that we as consumers simply do not know what is involved with procuring and ensuring the supply of the petroleum that we’ve come to depend on – and that we would rather not know. Because it’s a complicated, painful, dirty business. Maybe not as dirty as the movie suggests. I don’t doubt it’s exaggerated – the movie does have an agenda after all. But it makes me wonder – how DOES the oil industry work, then? And why don’t I know anything about it? And given the amount of money involved, can we really trust people in power to tell the truth about what actually happens in the course of procuring and distributing oil?

The American consumer don’t appear in the movie, but it would have been a good thing to put us in there, somehow. Throwing out bushels of plastic containers, wasting fuel by driving 2 blocks to pick up fast food…too bad they couldn’t come up with a subplot involving the consumer. Because where the hell else is all of that oil going?

What I really got from this movie: the sense that the average American really does not get it (what our relationship to the Mideast truly is), or chooses not to get it. Because it’s dry, boring, hard to understand, etc. Difficult to sum up in a 2 minute TV news bit. Painful to contemplate.

Watch it. You might not get it, so watch it again. You don’t have to agree with it by any means, but at least let it raise some questions for you…