I thought it was very good and gave an intriguing view of the oil business, highlighting the faults of many of the people involved and not particularly biased against America as I thought it might have been.
I haven't read Chomsky nor others with similar stories to tell, however, after seeing this, I am keen to read the book on which it is based, See No Evil.
I found it quite difficult to work out where it was all going for the first hour but, as you say, it came together towards the end.
As has been mentioned many times, I too thought it was similar to Traffic in the way that the story unfurled. However, I don't agree with your view that Traffic was shite. Although it was 5 years ago that I saw Traffic, I seem to remember it being a very intelligent story that again highlighted certain issues that generally aren't portrayed by the Hollywood motion picture industry.
There was some very good acting in it, although I'm not sure that I felt that George Clooney was worthy of his Oscar win. I guess it was more to do with the fact that he has had a very good year being involved in getting this and Good Night, and Good Luck. made
I noticed in the cast list, Bob Baer, on whose book the film is based. According to IMDB, he is CIA Security Officer #2
I quite like the fact that Clooney said last night that he put on weight to match Bob Baer but that Baer lost weight as George Clooney was going to be portraying a character like him!
Good to see Dr Bashir from Deep Space 9 in a reasonable size role. Again, checking IMDB, I see that he was also in Kingdom of Heaven last year (with another character called Nasir) although if I did notice seeing him in that, I had forgotten.
