Director:
Peter Berg
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Ashraf Barhoum, Chris
Cooper, Jason Bateman and Jeremy Piven
DVD release:
6Feb 2008
Rated MA 15+
Special Features:
* Feature commentary With director
Peter Berg
* Deleted scenes
* Character by character: The apartment shootout
* Constructing the freeway sequence
* Creating The Kingdom: Obligation to authenticity
* Fire In The Hole
* Simple ballistic issues
* Building a Kingdom
* On location in Abu Dhabi
* King Style
* Foreign Relations
* Friendship
* History of the Kingdom: An interactive timeline
With
all due respect to our American friends, their film industry tends
(with a few exceptions) to see world politics in a rather black-and-white,
them-and-us kind of way. Peter Berg’s The Kingdom
however is one of those exceptions. Berg shows a lot of courage
in taking on terrorism in its own backyard – the Middle
East – and asks his audience some difficult questions.
Key among those questions is to ask what makes people
turn to such extreme measures in the first place. He also questions
whether the standard response to terrorism – i.e. a military
one – is having the desired effect of stemming its flow,
or whether it’s simply adding fuel to the fire.
The action is set place principally in the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia (although filmed mostly in Dubai and Arizona),
where a terrorist group carries out a monstrous atrocity against
Westerners (mostly Americans) living in a foreign compound. Killing
American citizens is bad enough, but when news comes through that
one of their colleagues has perished, the FBI is determined to
find those responsible. The balance of international politics
however dictates a rather delicate response. After careful negotiations,
a small FBI team led by Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) is given
permission to go to Saudi Arabia for 5 days to ‘assist’
the locals in their investigation. Fleury’s team includes
Agents Janet Mays (Jennifer Garner), Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman)
and Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper). Their contact on the ground is
Col. Al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhoum), who seems sympathetic to their
cause, but is hamstrung by Saudi bureaucracy. The team’s
efforts aren’t exactly aided by the ‘efforts’
of local US diplomat Damon Schmidt (Jeremy Piven); but they’re
determined not to leave without identifying the perpetrators.
The trailer for this film essentially portrays it
as a kind of shoot-‘em-up action thriller; and that is a
significant part of the plot. There’s plenty of action,
but Berg doesn’t sugar-coat the violence. It’s gritty,
raw and occasionally stomach-turning stuff. But underlying the
more kinetic elements of the film is a political substratum that
should provide food for thought. The great triumph of The
Kingdom is that it works on both levels.
Matthew Michael Carnahan’s script is a model
for deft illustration of complex points. A good example occurs
when the team lands in Saudi and a local official notices an Israeli
stamp in Leavitt’s passport. Without needing to know an
awful lot about Middle Eastern politics, the scene tells you exactly
what you need to know with a minimum of fuss. Just how accurate
the script is in terms of addressing the root causes of terrorism
may be open to debate; but as I mentioned, the script is more
about asking questions than about providing definitive answers.
For
his part, Berg seems to have learned a lesson from his previous
film Friday Night Lights and keeps the plot moving along.
He perhaps loses control just a little in the climactic action
scenes, and there were a couple of slightly schmaltzy scenes that
I personally could have done without, but as a whole, Berg’s
direction is on the money.
After his flashy roles in Ray and Dreamgirls,
Jamie Foxx seems oddly subdued here, but that’s exactly
what the role of the measured Fleury demands. Jennifer Garner
plays a more vulnerable version of her Alias character,
but manages to make Mays’ compassion outshine over her forensic
abilities. Jason Bateman jumps from small screen to big with relative
ease, providing some of the film’s lighter moments; while
Chris Cooper gets his hands dirty (literally) in the oddly rather
marginal role of Sykes. The real stand-out in the cast however
is Ashraf Barhoum as Col. Al-Ghazi. His quiet determination and
resilience provide the film with both authenticity and gravitas.
The Kingdom is certainly one of the more
directs film made about the ‘war on terror’ since
it began. This is audacious – some might argue, inflammatory
– filmmaking from Berg and his team. It’s certainly
one of the more intelligent films on the topic, and for that alone
is worth grabbing (not to mention the slew of special features
accompanying it). It’s also one of the more powerful films
released on DVD so far this year; and will most likely leave you
shaken and (hopefully) challenged.
David Edwards
To see the trailer for The
Kingdom, click the play button below:
With
all due respect to our American friends, their film industry tends
(with a few exceptions) to see world politics in a rather black-and-white,
them-and-us kind of way. Peter Berg’s The Kingdom
however is one of those exceptions. Berg shows a lot of courage
in taking on terrorism in its own backyard – the Middle
East – and asks his audience some difficult questions.
For
his part, Berg seems to have learned a lesson from his previous
film Friday Night Lights and keeps the plot moving along.
He perhaps loses control just a little in the climactic action
scenes, and there were a couple of slightly schmaltzy scenes that
I personally could have done without, but as a whole, Berg’s
direction is on the money.