The Kingdom

I am having trouble figuring out how to begin this review and I think that it has to do with me trying to figure out what type of movie this actually was. It had elements from Syriana (which I considered to be a little too convoluted and full of itself with way too many storylines that were tenuously strung together), which at least one reviewer maintained that this was Syriana without the brains. I think some of the issues lie with director Peter Berg, who has directed movies spanning numerous genres, such as Very Bad Things (a very dark comedy about the killing of a prostitute during a bachelor party), The Rundown (kind of buddy action comedy with The Rock, Seann William Scott and Christopher Walken set in Amazon) and Friday Night Lights (a heavily dramatic sports movie). Was this trying to be an action movie with political undertones or a political movie with some action? Obviously it was not based on a true story, but it had some elements of Black Hawk Down, namely the claustrophobic feeling of the final shootout, which kind of suffered from a similar dichotomy of action and politics. I don't think this movie was trying to make a statement, but it didn't paint either side of this battle in any kind of good light, especially with the ending scene and the all or nothing approach.

Don't get me wrong as I really enjoyed the movie. The movie centered around an attack on an American compound located in Saudi Arabia and the quest to find the perpetrators of the attack. The action scenes were tense and well-filmed (which is tough to say with most movies nowadays). Berg did a great job of setting the scene with a fairly brilliant opening credit sequence that played as a kind of history lesson, as this movie dealt with the unique relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States, and the fact that this was not one of the other countries in the Middle East that most of us know more about. Jamie Foxx did his thing as the head of the FBI team sent to investigate the bombing. Jennifer Garner was decent and held her own in the fight scenes (she had lots of practice on Alias). However, my favorite actors in this movie were Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman and Ashraf Barhom, who played the Saudi police officer assisting the Americans in solving the case. Cooper was great as the grizzled veteran on the team and the bomb expert. Bateman served as the comic relief delivering one liner after one liner. But, the main man was Barhom who was excellent portraying a guy who had to respect the rules of his people, while also seeing the American side of the events and helping them get justice for the victims of the attack.

Overall, I walked out of the theater satisfied with what I had just seen and recommend it if you are looking for a decent action movie that has some politics mixed in.

5 out of 6 beers

Considering Berg is an executive producer on the TV show version of Friday Night Lights, it was cool that he had cameos from Dillon High head coach Kyle Chandler and cheerleader Minka Kelly.