Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
10/5/07
The
gloves are off. While Hollywood was quick to start using the 9/11
terrorist attacks as a reason heartbroken love interests had lost their
wives, the actual War on Terror had been conspicuously absent from the
movies during its' first six years. Oh, Hollywood had its' reasons:
a fear of encouraging hate crimes being the most noble, a fear of encouraging
people to vote Republican a bit less noble, and a fear of alienating pro-war
ticket buyers that was downright cowardly. But now that the War in
Iraq is as unpopular as it is entrenched, filmmakers will finally begin
to emerge from their bunkers and weigh in, with a staggering number of
war and terrorism-themed projects due just in time for the awards season.
First to emerge is Peter Berg's The Kingdom, a deliberately-paced,
but ultimately fulfilling FBI-vs.-terrorists thriller with the novelty
of being set in the country that produced more 9/11 hijackers than any
other: our good friend Saudi Arabia.
With
the help of terrorists in Saudi police uniforms, a US housing complex in
Riyadh is bombed, and follow-up attacks claim the life of one of the first
agents (Kyle Chandler) on the scene. Among his friends at the FBI
is Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), who quickly assembles a team
to travel there and investigate. But politics stand in the way, and
it takes all the maneuvering he can muster to get five heavily supervised
days for he, Janet Mays (Jennifer Garner), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper) and
Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman) to “observe”. Their heavy supervision
comes from Colonel Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), part of the woefully
underqualified Saudi military team assigned to the case. But the
Americans' forensic skill can't be denied, and bit by bit Fleury squeezes
them into the investigation. But as they close in on the truth, the
foreigners become the latest targets of the cell they're after.
Bottom
line: the average American knows next to nothing about the way day-to-day
life is lived in the Middle East, so the novelty value of The Kingdom's
setting (it was actually filmed in The United Arab Emirates) is considerable.
A bravura opening sequence takes us through the modern history of Saudi
Arabia, particularly the way it was influenced by the discovery of oil
and the involvement of Americans in the resulting industry. But the
film isn't really concerned with the politics of our relationship with
the Saudis and the region in general. That's a given. What
interests Kingdom writer Matthew Michael Carnahan is the question
of how our society and theirs can learn to co-exist. It's hard for
us to imagine a country that exists so much at the whim of its' leaders
(at least ours have to tell lies to justify doing whatever they feel like),
and the script packs in lots of surprising details that help to explain
why our country seems as alien to Saudis as their does to us. But
there's also common ground: Fleury and Al Ghazi learn a lot about
the ways their lives are alike, and a chilling sequence at the end reveals
how many of our negative impulses also come from the same places.
The film starts slow, and the investigation is never as interesting as
the people doing the investigating. But once the action kicks in
late in the game, director Peter Berg stages it with relish.
The
cast is wisely stocked with established players whose strong personas almost
eliminate the need to write them characters. Foxx, Garner and Cooper
all provide the expected levels of quiet professionalism, with Bateman
proving he can fit in with this sort of ensemble as the comic relief.
Together, there's real team chemistry in this group that helps to keep
things interesting until the plot catches up. In his first US film
role, Paradise Now's Barhom does an impressive job conveying Faris's
frustration as a subordinate to less qualified investigators and his growing
kinship and respect for his American guests. Jeremy Piven delightfully
applies his usual motor-mouthed slickster shtick to his role as a shady
US diplomat, and Richard Jenkins (always a favorite of mine) provides solid
support as the team's principled FBI boss.
The
Kingdom isn't a great movie, but it is a good one, combining an efficient
forensic procedural with some of the burning questions of our time.
Better late than never. |
