I saw Syriana, and boy, is my head sore. So is one of my shoulders.

Why? Because writer/director Stephen Gaghan spent two hours of my life figuratively sitting beside me, beating me over the head and poking my shoulder as he tried to make his cinematic argument. But even though his presence was figurative, he did it so vigorously, I'm in actual physical pain.

The film opens with veteran CIA operative Bob Barnes (George Clooney) in an underground Tehran nightclub hanging with some arms dealers.

He sells them two shoulder-launched missiles, but his Iranian buddies -- who he blows up shortly after the sale -- direct one to some Arab bad guys.

Cue to the U.S., where a small oil company named Killeen snagged leases in of the world's choicest undeveloped oil fields in Kazakhstan.

Since they're about to merge with an oil giant named Connex, lawyers are crawling up everyone's butts doing due diligence -- with the strong suspicion that Killeen did a little wheel-greasing to get the leases.

(In real life, Kazakhstan is both oil-rich and an extremely corrupt place).

Because of the merger, some Pakistani guest workers at a Persian Gulf operation get whacked from their jobs, which leaves only one option for some -- becoming terrorists.

And to top it all off, Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) is an American based in Geneva where he's a partner in a derivative-trading firm and also comments on TV about world oil markets.

Woodman gets invited to meet a Persian Gulf emir at the emir's estate in Marbella, Spain -- where he makes a sales pitch and sees his son die in a swimming mishap.

But despite that, he falls ideologically in love with the one of the emir's sons -- the good Arab prince, who doesn't want to be an American lapdog. The prince names him his economic adviser. He decides to keep working for the prince even though his marriage (to the delectable Amanda Peet) is on the rocks.

With all that to set the scene, be advised that at certain point, things start getting convoluted on screen.

The whole movie is about the U.S.'s crack cocaine-like addiction to cheap oil, which is true enough.

But several scenes intended to reveal how this world really works turn into ridiculous soliloquies.

Take this one:

"Corruption charges? Corruption? Corruption is government intrusions into market efficencies by way of regulation. That was Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting for scraps of meat out in the street. Corruption ... is why we win."

That was one oil bid'ness hotshot talking to a lawyer who would later try selling the hotshot's ass to the Justice Department to save the Killeen-Connex merger.

I wonder if I was the only person in the audience who think the screen should have split at that point so we could watch a reprise of Gordon Gekko's famous "Greed is Good" speech in 1987's Wall Street.

Personally, I would have liked to see ol' Gordo on the whole screen. At least then I would have been getting the real thing.

Another thing: You remember how in many thrillers, the bad guy yaps during a triumphal moment and spills all the beans before being shot from behind? How come none of these guys were blown away in mid-soliloquy? I would have paid money to see that!

Gagham won an Academy Award for his screenplay for Traffic, which took a similar look at the drug trade. Stephen Soderbergh directed that film. I wasn't too keen on that flick either.

In this movie, I largely didn't care about the characters. The hectoring tone of the script, as you may already gathered, was seriously irritating to me.

To me, this film suffers from a case of Hollywoodism. Instead of making it intelligent, the filmmakers went for obvious to give it more midmarket appeal.

If there are sentient adults out there who might be surprised to find corruption in the international oil business or that an organization like the CIA, where deceit and treachery are standard tools, might eat one of its own, then I can only say that has me fearing for the human race.

Video fodder -- at best.