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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: The Kingdom

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#1 of 1 Posted 9/15/07 11:14 PM

From harveykarten Posts 798 Last Feb-7
To All [Msg # 22641.1 ]

THE KINGDOM

Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey S. Karten
Universal Pictures
Grade: C
Directed by:    Peter Berg
Written By: Matthew Michael Carnahan
Cast:   Jamie Foxx, Ashraf Barhom, Chris Booper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Jeremy Piven
Screened at: Regal E-Walk, NYC, 9/15/07
Opens: September 28, 2007

Documentary movies about America’s involvement in Iraq like Charles Ferguson’s “No End in Sight” are excellent primers, particularly for those of us who are not news junkies and prefer to get information on world affairs from celluloid. Dramatic works like Paul Haggis’s superb “In the Valley of Elah” give us insight into why war is hell, as that director introduces us to a military town in which every soldier on leave from the fighting in Iraq is afflicted with what used to be called shellshock. “The Kingdom,” directed by Peter Berg–noted for helming “Friday Night Lights” (about the economically depressed town of Odessa, Texas, and its heroic high-school football team), and for acting in thirty-five movies since 1988–does neither effectively. We come out of the film with a vague knowledge of America’s connection to Saudi Arabia, a job performed much better by Michael Moore in “Fahrenheit 9/11,” while the mayhem generated by an ambitious quarter of FBI agents is generic. The action could have taken place in Baja California, with the addition of a few mosques, as well as within the Arabian peninsula. What’s more Matthew Michael Carnahan’s script is laden with a wholly unnecessary scene featuring Jamie Foxx’s character’s visit to his small son’s elementary school describing how the boy was pulled ever so slowly from an area in his mother that is “below the belly-button.” The kid’s classmates seem entranced, while a mature audience for this R-rated film will wonder what that was all about. (Hint: it means that FBI agents can be good fathers and not just faceless bureaucrats sticking out their badges and yelling, “FBI!”)

In no way does “The Kingdom” stand out, then, amid a growing field of movies that purport to enlighten us or entertain us with our problems in the world’s most volatile area. The most impressive part of the story comes at the very beginning, as Berg, using valuable, largely black-and-white archival clips, traces the history of U.S.-Saudi involvement from the 1930s when, surprisingly enough even for those knowledgeable in this arena of politics, oil was first discovered on the Arabian Peninsula while the men were drilling simply for water. One wonders how history would be different if only water were indeed discovered, though one might conjecture that the dominoes leading to the current Iraq War would simply not have fallen as they did. Alas, the archival films went by so quickly, as if Berg were simply fulfilling some demand by a governmental agency to be educational, that we cannot blame an audience for confusion right at the opening.

Promptly after the archival history lesson, we go to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where in fact bombings took place on May 12, 2003. (Al-Qaeda-directed suicide attacks on that day killed 35 people, leaving over 160 wounded. A smaller campaign of insurgency in Saudi Arabia had started in November 2000 when car bombings killed western expatriates in Riyadh and elsewhere.) Two terrorists open fire from their vehicle, killing one hundred westerners stationed there through their jobs with an American oil company. Many of the dead are children. Though the U.S. Attorney General (Danny Huston) vetoes American action for fear of alienating the monarchy, one brave FBI agent, Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), manages to take off from Washington with three fellow agents, determined to avenge the death of one of their own. Much will be made of the growing bond between the suspicious Saudi Col. Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), serving as the agents’ tour guide to the crime scenes, and the fish-out-of-war American agent, Fleury, while Fleury’s fellow agents, Grant Sykes (Christ Cooper), Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman) are saddled with underdeveloped roles. Garner appears at all perhaps to bring in a larger audience to the theaters, but given her tight-fitting T-shirt and jeans, one wonders whether the FBI believes that the ultra-conservative Saudi culture is more like the more open civilization in Abu Dhabi–where most of the filming takes place.

The generic fast-editing of hand-to-hand combat and exchanges of gunfire, the emphasis on close-ups from cinematographer Mauro Fiore’s hand-held cameras, and the shooting-gallery action that might have come out of dozens of movies like “Rambo” and “Shoot ‘em Up,” all militate against the entertainment potential of the movie, stamping this one as nothing that stands out from the conventional takes on war. “Syriana” this is not.   A 150-minute version of “The Kingdom” was reviewed by Variety’s John Anderson on August 21, cut shortly thereafter to its present 110 minutes. While the shorter version is more commercial, enough looks slashed to make the narrative seem patched together, a cut-and-paste job. The two performances that stand out are those of Ashraf Barhom as Col Faris Al Ghazi, who serves as the FBI agents’ tour guide who is at first hostile but who gradually bonds with Fleury, and an all-too-brief role by a fast talking Jeremy Piven as Damon Schmidt, the American ambassador to Riyadh.

Rated R.    110 minutes   © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: The Kingdom

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