10 Awesome War Movies About Obscure Conflicts

Syriana is a slow, complex thriller about the shady world of petrol politics, roughly adapted from ex-CIA operative Robert Baer's memoir See No Evil. This may not sound like a great recipe for a war film, but there's a lot to love about this sober, serious head-scratcher.

The story is about the many interrelated consequences of a US-based oil company's aggressive takeover strategy. It is told as four interlaced stories, one about due diligence investigations which reveal hyper-corruption, another about sinister CIA double-dealing, another that tells the story of laid-off oil workers radicalised into terrorism, and yet another about the shady back-room economics that lead to wars.

It's very much like a Cold War espionage movie, with betrayals and hidden allegiances aplenty, but updated for the post-9/11 world. It works best on a second watch, as there are lots of subtleties that can be missed the first time around. And though they may be fairly commonplace now, Syriana was one of the earliest films (2005) to feature a representation of a drone strike.

It presents itself as a behind-the-scenes look at the causes of war, and for that reason was sometimes written off as one big conspiracy theory. Nonetheless, it is a baffling but rewarding movie that gives you a big hit of the depth and substance that is sometimes lacking from war movies.