Escape from Riyadh

The Kingdom

(R)

originally published October 3, 2007

I’m sure many will find ideological fault with the new geopolitical action thriller, The Kingdom. Too jingoistic for the left, not tough enough on the terrorists for the right, The Kingdom isn’t a card-carrying member of any party. Politics may be at the center of director Peter Berg’s new film, but it is not the heart that beats and bleeds through two hours of the most intense, cathartic action I’ve seen in years. Just hours after terrorists attack a U.S. housing complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, an F.B.I. investigative team has five days in the Kingdom to assist local authorities with their investigation. The secret mission is personal and professional for take-no-shit team leader Ronald Fluery (Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx), tough gal forensic technician Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), old-hand bomb tech Grant Sykes (Academy Award winner Chris Cooper), and smart-ass intelligence analyst Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman, whose career is back on track post-“Arrested Development”). If they are to capture the mass murderer and suspected terrorist mastermind, Saudi citizen Abu Hamza, behind an act that killed over 100 men, women and children, these F.B.I. agents must overcome opposition from all sides. American bureaucracy, Saudi authorities, Islamic law and time are all against them. With the help of a Saudi policeman, Colonel Faris Al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom of Paradise Now), Fluery, Mayes, Sykes and Leavitt risk everything - including their own lives - to win an important battle in the never-ending war on terror.

After the year’s most informative opening credits chart the history of American-Saudi diplomatic/ economic relations (easily misconstruable as partisan propaganda), The Kingdom explodes with a terrorist act staged with such authenticity (the entire film reeks of verisimilitude) that it is tough to watch. Berg, a longtime proponent of the handheld camera, and his director of photography, Mauro Fiore (Smokin’ Aces), make the most of what has become a most overused cinematic technique. Berg, like Bourne Supremacy and Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass, uses the popular shaky method for function not just form. In the The Kingdom, constant movement places the audience in the action and amplifies the drama. It brings us into the action and makes us feel every explosion, every bullet, every tense moment. Events unfold in a highly controlled, documentarian manner. The Kingdom is extremely well directed by Berg (Friday Night Lights), who is busily establishing himself as an auteur, along the lines of Kingdom producer Michael Mann. Berg’s fourth feature may feel like Mann, but this exemplar of action-oriented, Hollywoodized cinéma vérité looks like Berg. In his first produced screenplay, writer Matthew Michael Carnahan (Robert Redford’s fall political thriller, Lions for Lambs) - the brother of Narc writer-director Joe Carnahan - has concocted a scenario more frightfully real than any of “24”’s six terrorist plots. He captures the sleazy ease of back-room deals and sticky bureaucratic red tape. The documentary texture is heightened by the display of character’s names and job titles upon their first appearance. (Keeping track of what civil servant holds what position and whom they have power over is as demanding here as in real life.)

As great a cast as The Kingdom has, the actors endanger the film’s highly sought after realism. Yet none of the four leads packed their off-screen persona for the trip into The Kingdom. Foxx is proving to be as elusive a major star as Russell Crowe. He brings his phenomenal appeal and amazing strength to the chivalrous Fluery, a man soft enough to befriend a child yet hard enough to take down an armed Saudi soldier with his bare hands. Though finally an Academy Award winner, the craggy-faced Cooper will never gain household name status, yet he excels out of the spotlight as “that guy who was so great in that movie.” Garner and Bateman are the two actors with the most to prove. Garner, the former “Alias” star, escapes the shadow of Mt. Affleck as the tough chick, so accustomed to the gender discrimination of southern Virginia that she can shrug off its hot desert clime cousin. Bateman excels as the unit’s tension breaker, a source of sarcasm requisitioned for any situation as grimly stressful as that of The Kingdom. Yet as familiar as the faces - starring and supporting (Emmy winner Jeremy Piven, country superstar Tim McGraw, Richard Jenkins of “Six Feet Under,” Frances Fisher, Danny Huston, Kyle Chandler of “Friday Night Lights,” and director Berg) - are, they are a serious bunch of chameleonic character actors, recognizable but unplaceable.

A sterling political thriller better than any of the past three years, The Kingdom may be the most effective post-9/11 film related to 9/11. (Taking that pole position from last year’s United 93 may have more to do with freshness than quality, but it's close.) Filled with graphic, meaningful violence - no death is dismissed as unimportant - The Kingdom muddies the moral waters by film’s end. The movie expends energy and screen time firmly establishing the good guys and the bad, refusing to stereotype its Arab characters. Familial scenes soften the Saudi policemen’s rough edges as they do the American investigators, while the terrorists show no mercy, killing anyone - innocent, guilty, America, Saudi, Christian, Jewish, Muslim - who gets in the way of their holy mission. Nonetheless, The Kingdom leaves audiences with a rational, somber - and likely unpopular - indictment of both sides that resonates long after the credits have rolled.

Drew Wheeler