The Kingdom tries really hard to be a political thriller and I'll give it points for that. Rather than creating something along the lines of The Manchurian Candidate (the original that is), we get something closer to Jerry Bruckheimer (sp) meets an attempt at deep thinking.
The opening credits gave me hope. They are really well done. I was impressed with the visual style. The context of the credits made me think this movie was going to take a serious look at a political tale. The film looks great. Peter Berg deserves a lot of credit for this fact. His style gave a realistic flow to a script that sadly falters.
The plot concerns an explosive attack on a compound populated by the employees of a U.S. oil company. What exactly happens during the entire attack actually surprised me a little, so again, I thought we were off to a good start. In this story, the FBI is the lead agency whenever U.S. citizens have crimes committed against them abroad. Beats me if this is true. But, the U.S. government won't let the FBI go into Saudi Arabia (The Kingdom) because they fear an increased U.S. presence will only increase anger towards Americans and strain relations between the royal family and oil companies...er, the government, I mean.
Jamie Foxx pressures the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia into letting him take a small crew into the country to investigate. They head over and have 5 days to figure out what happened. Foxx goes out along with Chris Cooper: the bomb expert, Jennifer Garner: forensics specialist, and Jason Bateman: systems analyst. Bomb expert...sure, makes sense. Forensics, again makes sense, except Garner's character was very close to an agent who is killed over there (mmm...I'm sensing "revenge"). Bateman's character isn't given much to do other than make a snarky comment here and there, discover a website, sort of flirt with Jennifer, and get caught in a pretty bad situation.
They get help from two members of the Saudi police, one of which was assigned to be their babysitter by the local prince. It's a given that he and Foxx eventually bond over their respective love of family and a desire to protect them.
For every attempt to show us moments of "they are just like us," we get moments of U.S. bravado...often in the form of dialogue. I'm not saying that such bravado doesn't exist; it's just annoying to see it still presented without it being questioned. The movie seems to want to have its cake and eat it too. For example, a point is made that Bateman's character has been to Israel three times to visit his grandmother who lives there. You'd think, then, that his character, Adam, would have at least a little insight into the experience had by someone who lives in the Middle East. Instead, Adam is often called on doing things that are less than respectful to the Muslim officers they are working with. I'm not saying Adam can't be a dick; I'm saying, if he's going to be a dick, just let him be a dick, who cares where he's been. Adam's actually not a complete dick, he just gets some dickish lines.
The crime solving aspect seems to happen almost completely by chance. Granted, the four FBI agents are initially hampered by the fact that they can't touch anything at the crime scene, and they are constantly being watched and escorted. Still, nothing in what happens in the plot seems to point to these people being the best of the best. Chris Cooper finds a piece of the detonation device and he's the expert, yet he ends up handing it off to Foxx who takes it with him when, eventually, he and Faris (the main Saudi cop) go talk to a former terrorist. They go to the blast site with a general idea of who might be responsible, presumably because they have some sort of intel about prior bombings done by this person. As I've learned from crime dramas, bomb makers have a signature (hell, learned that one from Speed too) so you'd think there would have been a data base they could have checked and compared this part of the device to, but nope...guess not.
We never get answers to some of what happened, and it's not because they searched and just couldn't find the answers. It seems to be because that plot point was only needed to get us from this dramatic moment to the next one. We're not there to find the answers. We're there to get to the point when we can blow stuff up and get revenge.
The ads mention the final 30 minutes being super intense. Actually, it's probably the final 20-25, because the very end is rather quiet. They are intense. They are well shot, though the realistic camera movements sometimes meant you weren't sure exactly what you were seeing. We get our promised "every one will pay" moment at the end of the sequence. I couldn't really argue with one aspect of it though since I didn't want one character to die and that character survives.
In the end, a weird sort of parallel is made between what drove the FBI agents and what drove the terrorists. It was the same thing. Had the movie not tried to walk the thoughtful road along with the look-I-can-shoot-the-hell-out-of-this-car road, the finale might have had more impact. Instead, seeing the team staying the same after their experience, as well as the terrorists, just made everything seem futile. Sadly, that may have been the point after all.
You might want to wait till this comes out on DVD to watch it. There are moments worth seeing, just not enough of them to make it a really good film. Bateman's still cute though.
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