"Syriana" is that rarest of animals -- the star-laden studio release that's all steak, no sizzle. Steven Gaghan's political thriller is one of the few times in recent years where I wanted a movie to be just a little bit longer, just a little bit more sentimental and just a little bit more formulaic. A frequently fascinating document about the intersection of economics, religion, nationalism and globalism, "Syriana" aims more for the head than the gut, both to its benefit and detriment.

Revisiting the criss-crossing narrative structure he used on his Oscar-winning "Traffic" script, Gaghan balances a minimum of four self-sustaining plots. Setting everything in motion is Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig), the Oxford-educated and reform-minded son of a Middle Eastern ruler. When Nasir sells natural gas drilling rights in his country to the Chinese -- he actually believes in pure capitalism -- he sets off a panic that ripples back to the United States, where oil giant Connex is attempting to merge with rising Texas outfit Killen, which now controls rights to valuable fields in Kazakhstan. That deal comes under investigation by the Justice Department and Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), an ambitious attorney with a powerful Washington firm, is tasked with performing the illusion of due diligence -- basically doing whatever is necessary to get the merge cleared.

Other storylines involve George Clooney's Bob Barnes, a long-time CIA agent whose loyalties are about to be seriously tested and Matt Damon's Bryan Woodman, whose family and career will be torn apart. And while you would never guess from any of the trailers, one additional tangent features Wasim (Mazhar Munir), a Pakistani immigrant who is lured into a local madrassa after being laid off.

Everything does come together by the end, but viewers who need a bathroom break or who seek to rebutter their popcorn will certainly be lost, as will more than a few less negligent audience members. It would take a scorecard to keep all of the players straight, but even with ample documentation, keeping the good guys and bad guys straight is impossible. Nobody in "Syriana" is pure. They're all wrapped up in the same webs of hypocrisy, morally compromised to the hilt.

These somewhat one-dimensional -- but interesting none-the-less -- characters are defined and humanized by their dueling professional determination and personal failings. Bob and Bryan have jeopardized their families for their ideals, letting down their sons in the process. Nasir and Bennett, in contrast, are trying to escape from the legacies established by their fathers. There's enough masculine insecurity in this movie to fuel a half-dozen Steven Spielberg melodramas, but Gaghan isn't interested in going down that road.

Instead, in fine muckraking tradition, he's asking big questions. Why is it not in the United States' best interests to have true democracy in the Middle East? Why is it in the Justice Department's best interests to turn a blind eye to certain shady corporate dealings? How are the machinations surrounding Big Oil just an extension of hundreds of years of history between the Middle East and the Western World? What are the risks of doing business in a region where you don't speak the languages or understand the cultures? More than a few of the answer Gaghan provides are reductive, but it's likely to provoke debate either way.

In a speech that self-consciously aspires to be the "Greed is Good" of the new millennium, Tim Blake Nelson's Danny Dalton warns Bennett, "Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and war. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the street. Corruption is why we win."

Liberal viewers may come out feeling vindicated somehow and conservatives may whine about feeling persecuted, but the absence of any specific political references is striking. That the current administration has such close ties to oil and the Middle East is tough to deny, but "Syriana" leaves little question that the problems depicted in the film are an extension of many decades of policy and ideology, mistakes and choices made by leaders of all party affiliations. Yes, it's probably a liberal movie, but anybody getting offended will have to think hard about what they're defending.

With "Traffic," Gaghan's script came closer to assigning blame and responsibility in the drug war and even if it gave its ostensible villains some shading, it played for viewer sympathy. "Syriana" offers fewer easy character arcs and fewer melodramatic swells, pushing viewers toward introspection and doubt. One of the things the movie argues, though, is that doubt isn't a state of mind that Americans feel comfortable with. The box office will probably suffer accordingly.

In only his second directing effort, Gaghan's biggest challenge and success is mounting the huge production in the first place. That Gaghan and editor Tim Squyres maintain continuity at all is impressive, even if the pacing is sometimes erratic, with successive dialogue-heavy scenes occasionally jeopardizing any building tension. Gaghan and cinematographer Bob Elswit have gone for a fly-on-the-wall style, often just accentuating the alien Middle Eastern environments, landscapes where the First World and Third World coexist.

With at least a dozen serious showcase parts, it's no wonder so many top actors signed on for "Syriana" and every single performance is good enough to leave you wanting more. Clooney has proven on any number of occasions that he's a star without on-screen ego and here -- chubby, bearded and vulnerable -- he's laid bare, easily erasing all thoughts of his standard movie star aura. Damon, whose instincts are very similar to Clooney's, radiates both intelligence and uncertainty. When it comes to valuable support, it's hard to beat Wright, Blake Nelson, Siddig, Christopher Plummer and William Hurt.

It's probably intentional that when "Syriana" ends, I was left with the sense that I hadn't quite managed to see the entire story, that I merely caught a two-hour glimpse into an ongoing struggle. That's an easy thing to be intrigued by, but much more complicated to fully embrace, much less market to the mainstream.