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| Courtesy of Universal Pictures |
 Under Fire: "The Kingdom" follows the trail of an FBI team tasked with finding terrorists in less than friendly Saudi Arabia. |
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It's unlikely you'll ever casually suggest to a buddy anytime soon: "Hey, we should go to Saudi Arabia."
If you've just seen director Peter Berg's "The Kingdom," the odds will have gone down even further.
Writer Matthew Michael Carnahan does not wait long to initiate the mayhem. Terrorists blow up a softball game inside an American compound in Riyadh. They blow it up twice, actually. The second, larger bomb goes off after all the emergency response personnel have arrived.
Once all the carnage has quieted, more than 100 people are dead, American civilians as well as the Saudi officers who were there to keep the Americans safe.
It's a tune all too eerily familiar.
"The Kingdom" centers on an elite FBI team (Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman) that helps the Saudis with the criminal investigation. Once in place, team leader Agent Flurry (Foxx) and company look on as the Saudi police raid a house and kill four suspects.
Mission accomplished?
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Movie Review
'The kingdom'
Rating: ★★★
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman.
Director: Peter Berg.
Parent's guide: R.
Running time: 1 hour, 50 mins.
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Sort of. None of the four FBI team members believe they have caught the real culprit. Nonetheless, the team's welcome is more than a little worn out and it hits the road headed for the airport and then home.
"The Kingdom" would not be worth your money were it to roll the credits here, though. And don't worry, as the credits are a solid half-hour away.
Their convoy is ambushed and Adam Leavitt (Bateman's character) is kidnapped. It's at this juncture that I advise you to take deep breaths. The tension is thick and it does not let up until the credits finally roll.
Knowing that Leavitt's kidnapping will most likely end with a crude online video beheading, Flurry and the rest of the team race recklessly after the captors.
This is why you must remind yourself to breathe. The action is loud, the violence is graphic and the emotion is utterly real. There were moments when I might have emitted helpless sounds unintentionally. I was sincerely terrified for Leavitt.
As a film, "The Kingdom" is beautiful to watch. It is safe to say Berg has been influenced by Michael Mann, who was one of the film's producers.
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| Chester Carson |
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What makes it worthwhile, though, is that the film is not just window dressing. Behind all the hate and violence, the movie provokes thought. Surely, the thoughts it will elicit will vary dramatically from person to person.
Here were some of mine: There is a lot of hate in this world. It is mind-boggling that there is so much, in fact, that people are willing to strap bombs to their bodies and detonate them as long as several of their enemies are killed as well. Perhaps the saddest part to all of this, however, is that there does not seem to be a solution.
The last thirty seconds of "The Kingdom" only reinforces that thought.
