The Kingdom

In a year which saw more cinematic wind and whining wasted on the War in Iraq than any other issue facing our fading nation, The Kingdom can claim all the joyful jingoistic mantle. It’s an amazing movie, a rock solid thriller as brutal as it is blind. It’s randy ra-ra Americanism is so undeniably entertaining that you don’t even mind the Red State revisionism. Peter Berg, an actor whose ability behind the lens has been uneven at best, really delivers in big, broad action movie strokes - and when compared to the self-pitying pandering that passed itself off as “War is Hell” handwringing in 2007, its cheerful chest pounding is in the right place. It may not win us any friends across the sea, and definitely paints Muslims as indoctrinating villains, but we’re so blinded by the strategic stars and stripes placed before our sense of justice that we too call for blood.

When a suicide bombing destroys a US compound inside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the FBI wants to investigate. Unfortunately, the government of the oil rich country doesn’t allow outsiders into their internal police affairs. This doesn’t stop Special Agent Ronald Fluery (Jamie Foxx) from bringing together specialists Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper), and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman). With a little blackmail persuasion, the Feds are given five days, and the help of a local police officer (Ashraf Barhom), to observe and then leave. Naturally, the Americans’ presence, along with the evidence they uncover, puts their own lives in mortal danger. And as foreigners on unfriendly soil, there is no guarantee of protection.

On the commentary track accompanying the new DVD release from Universal, director Berg acknowledges that there will be some who take this movie the wrong way. While prostylitizing writer Matthew Michael Carnahan may have the best intentions ever for all this anti-Arab race-baiting, (he’s as insanely ideological here as he was in his overwrought scripting of Lions for Lambs), what we wind up with more times than not is mustache twirling scoundrels decked out in Middle Eastern garb. Berg apologizes for any offense to sensibility, and wants to make it clear that this is as much a tribute to Saudi Arabia as it is a critique. Constantly referencing the cooperation he received, and the concern voiced by many Muslims on set, we are to infer that the resulting film is a formidable meeting of the minds. Sadly, that’s some specious conjecture at best.

Indeed, this film is brazen in its “all Arabs are evil” philosophy and unrepentant in showing the carnage that results from such a simplified stance, The Kingdom is like a James Cameron/Arnold Schwarzenegger collaboration where neither party is participating. It’s manipulative, manic, and just a tad manufactured. It raises more issues than it ever wants to address, and boils all Muslim culture down to a series of backwards belief systems. Granted, as in all stereotyping, there are snippets of truth here and there, and when dealing with a crime that is merely mimicking actual events that have played out before, truth is a defense to such defamatory stances. But what’s most fascinating about The Kingdom is how readily we buy into the xenophobia, and how satisfying it is to see our brave men and women kick some true believer butt.

One does have to get over the hurdle of the opening atrocities, however. Without giving too much away, this pre-planned attack will shoot at single mothers, run over children, blow-up ball players and, eventually, elevate all three to something almost impossible to comprehend. The scale of this event is massive, and its impact on an audience is truly disturbing. Add to this the ineffectual CSI skills of the Saudi police (their main detecting device – beating confessions out of possible co-conspirators) and the basic mentality that what happens in the Arab world stays within the tightly wound region, and you’ve got a perfect storm of storytelling subterfuge.

Viewed as liberators – at least when it comes to the facts – Jamie Foxx and his group of high profile performers are actually quite believable as crime scene experts. Each gets their own important moment of detecting denouement, with the Oscar winner for Ray running ramshackle over the double talk speaking soldiers. It’s one of Foxx’s best performances, since it’s grounded in a reality that keeps him from being a total swaggering ass. Equally good are Jennifer Garner as a kind of forensics pathologist (she scans corpses for clues) and Chris Cooper, who’s the grizzled yet game old timer who really knows his way around a bomb crater. In combination with Bateman, whose nothing more than a computer nerd novice and a potential last act plot device, we have a no nonsense bunch who’ll get to the bottom of this case. And since the narrative is structured in such a way as to demand retribution, we can’t wait for these champions to divide and conquer.

And they do so in spectacular fashion. Over the course of his career behind the camera, actor Berg has become an accomplished filmmaker. Previous efforts like The Rundown and Friday Night Lights won’t quite prepare you for the motion picture professionalism he shows here. There are several spectacular stunt sequences that rate right up there with the best the genre has to offer, and his ability to mix in shards of humanity speaks to his growing artist acumen. In the commentary, he gives credit to his editors for making his many shots seamlessly merge together. And as part of the DVD packaging, a pair of onset documentaries goes into exquisite detail about the free for all finale, from brutal car crash to full blown bullet ballet.

Yet The Kingdom is such a strong entertainment, such a substantial us vs. them example of wish fulfillment that it’s easy to ignore the many mixed messages. Basically, the film is a brutal Wild West shoot ‘em up ported over to the Middle East and given a glossy, post-9/11 reading. It will invigorate the most dormant sense of citizenship, and have you cheering in places that should give you pause. Even the ending stacks the deck in favor of the fallen. It involves a single whispered sentiment, and how its meaning can be manipulated depending on the nature of the individual offering it. After all the cheering and jeering within the audience, it’s a weird way of providing closure. Clearly Berg and Carnahan think it’s clever. They may be the only ones to understand its true meaning. Viewers may misinterpret it as a call to arms.