The Kingdom

Peter Berg is an odd duck to say the least. Just take a glance at his films and you will see that he directs films all over the map. Very Bad Things which I can't honestly remember very well except that I was not that happy with it when it was over (maybe it deserves a second viewing), came first. Then there was The Rundown, a movie so absurd that its opening sequence involved Arnold Schwarzenagger literally saying good luck as he symbolically passed the action movie star persona to Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson. Then there was Friday Night Lights a pretty standard cut from the mold underdog sports story. And now we have The Kingdom. What motivates a man to direct a black comedy followed by a by the numbers action film, then a sports underdog story and finally a police procedural set in the oddest of locales?

After a series of bombings in Saudi Arabia at an American living compound, a team of FBI agents led by Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) heads to Saudi Arabia to investigate the crime. There the team must deal with the bureaucratic rules that forbid them to touch evidence and the loop holes they must jump through to get to their job. They are accompanied by a protective guard led by Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom) who is sympathetic to their search for evidence but is restricted by his own duties. Eventually Fleury is able to get access to the evidence and Al Ghazi is made head of the investigation. The procedural part of the film shows the team finding evidence and tracking down leads until they find some involved parties. This then leads into the final act of the film, an intense firefight between Fleury's team and the terrorists.

Was it a perfect film? Not exactly. The film started with a slightly unnecessary prologue on the history of Saudi Arabia and its relationship to the United States and I didn't think much of Danny Huston's evil Attorney General. A large part of the film is devoted to the slowly building relationship between Fleury and Al Ghazi which was quite well done but when it got into the procedural aspect it was pretty dull and largely superficial. The film really gets going when the team's convoy is attacked and it leads to an intense firefight. Of course it may bend reality a bit at times as five people attack and overcome an entire building full of the terrorists and at times I wondered where they kept getting ammo for their weapons from. Still the violence is graphic but effective and you can't help but think the whole act was well done.

The film ends with some obligatory scenes, in my opinion a little heavy handed. There is some forced antagonism between Fleury and his team for Al Ghazi which I don't think was necessary. Overall though this was an entertaining enough film on a topic that is by no means an easy one to tackle.