May as well give a little outline of the events in the film for those that haven't seen it. No spoilers, though.
The primary story is of a plot to kill a reform-minded Prince in some unnamed middle-eastern country and influence the reigning King, who is dying, to hand over the reigns to his other son, because the reform-minded son wants to give oil contracts to a Chinese company (citing that they made a better offer and that they actually bother to learn Arabic when negotiating) and the other son is willing to give the contracts to a US company.
There are two main subplots going on at the same time. One is about an investigation of a merger between a big oil company that will receive the oil in the aforementioned unnamed country if the little brother becomes King, and a smaller company that beat out the larger company for control of a pipeline in Kazakhstan. The other subplot is about a man and his son that get laid-off when the oil refineries in the aforementioned unnamed country come under new ownership. Since their workers visas are up, the only way for them to stay in the country (they are Pakistani) is for the son to join an Islamic school, where he is seduced into becoming a suicide bomber.
The stories are told from the points of view of many different protagonist, including the CIA agent initially sent to assassinate the reform-minded Prince, an energy-trading consultant whose son dies at the Prince's house and is made the Prince's personal economic advisor, the investigator into the shady oil company merger, as well as the Prince and the islamic son themselves.
The institutions that end up coming out in a bad light are 1) Middle-Eastern rulers that sell-out their countries for short-term increases in their own personal wealth and spend money on $500K cars while the infrastructure of the land crumbles, 2) large oil companies that circumvent the law to simply merge with anybody that outbids them for a coveted contract, 3) the US justice department for letting them get away with it and simply nailing a few patsies when a fuss is raised, 4) the CIA for assassinating potential leaders that would do genuine good for their own countries, but not serve the interests of the US, and 5) Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups that seduce impressionable and hurting young men to sacrifice themselves. The only people that come out of this looking somewhat good and are sympathetically portrayed are the earnest reformers who get killed and the naive suicide bombers who get killed.
