Desertman84 The Oil Factor is documentary written and directed by Gerard Ungerman and Audrey Brohy.It was narrated by Ed Asner.Also,it examines America's continuing thirst for oil, how it has impacted the War in Iraq, and who stands to get rich as well as who stands to lose more than mere money as the battle wages on. It includes interviews with former defense department adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, author and linguist Noam Chomsky, former Pentagon analyst Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, and many others.Aside from that,it analyzes the development of some global events since the beginning of the century especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks from the perspective of oil and oil-abundant regions.Experts have estimated that at the current rate of production, the United States and Europe will exhaust their supplies of oil by the year 2010. Meanwhile, the nation of Iraq holds the world's second largest reserve of oil, representing nearly three-quarters of the Earth's current petroleum supplies. As the United States and Great Britain mount an ongoing war in Iraq that has eliminated their former government and established a new one in its place under American watch, is it a coincidence that Iraq holds a massive supply of a strategic resource America badly needs? Especially given the fact that a number of the key reasons the United States had presented for going to war, most notably Iraq's alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, have turned out to be based on false information?Although there is nothing really new information in it that an average American do really know at present,the filmmakers make a coherent case about the issue involved - the need for oil.In their quest to connect as many dots as possible (Halliburton, depleted uranium, civilian war deaths), they themselves give information on the map of U.S. intrigue.Finally,we finally also get to realize that there is more to it about the country's War On Terror as some Americans still believe that it is the main reason why the United States waged war against Iraq in 2003.

dredyoung I will have to watch this documentary again. It is packed with blunt recounting of the history and multiple forces impelling the US and other dominant nations as they mercilessly sweep back and forth across this oil and gas rich and vulnerable Middle Eastern region. I have loosely kept up with the major shifts in power over there over the last fifty years and have delved some into the times in the early 1900s when oil fields were being discovered and drilling contracts were being signed. I only recently learned about the role of the pipelines through the region between Turkey and Afghanistan and from there to China, India, Europe, and the US. There so much provocative information congealed in this hour and a half that it screams to be taken seriously and viewed many times. And, I am not one who views films more than once. I offer thanks to those who made this film.

frank_rotering My wife and I saw this at the Vancouver International Film Festival and came to it with high expectations. We had seen several useful documentaries on the neocons and Iraq (e.g. "The World According to Bush") and on oil (e.g. "The Death of Suburbia"). We were looking to this film to tie the two together and to provide a solid argument that the quest for oil was the hidden rationale for the US's "war on terror." Our disappointment was so great that we almost walked out during the showing - something that has never occurred in years of attendance at the VIFF. The film starts out well by pointing to the imminent depletion of oil in various regions, but then inexplicably leaves its subject and spends about 45 minutes offering a rehash of the Iraq war, human rights abuses, the Taliban, etc. None of this is new, and all of it has been presented better elsewhere. Towards the end there is a bit more talk about pipelines and US bases in the Middle East, but no coherent argument about the connection between oil and the "war on terror" is ever made.We don't mind if a movie fails to make a compelling case if an honest attempt is made, but "The Oil Factor" doesn't even try. Its title is not simply misleading, it is dishonest.

Spuzzlightyear The Oil Factor is a movie that has a lot going behind it but ultimately delivers nothing and you're left with a movie that tries desperate to be a movie you'll talk about by repeating stuff you already know. EG, George Bush likes a oil a whole lot, the Iraq war may have been perpetrated under false pretenses, war is bad and so on. It's perfectly obvious that the filmmakers ran out of material when we're covering material that's hardly related to the topic at hand, mainly the ridiculous rehashing of the Iraqi prison abuses. I mean, WE KNOW THAT. Give us something new! This documentary doesn't fulfill that goal, so it's ultimately disappointing.