Review of The Kingdom (2007) by Spangle — 03 Sep 2016

The Kingdom, at its best, is a riveting and powerful look at the effects of war on those in the Middle East and in the United States, as well as the politics leading up to modern day conflicts. At its worst, it is an anti-Muslim film that plays far too much into action movie cliches.

The positives largely come in the first half, in which the film is far more detective-based as this group of FBI agents head to Saudi Arabia to investigate who perpetrated a bombing in the American compound in the country.

Here, the writing is quite good and the film showcases just how much the Saudis hate the terrorists as well. However, it seems as though director Peter Berg thought this was boring and decided it was best for the final half hour to turn into a shoot 'em up action movie that demonizes the Saudis and half hazardly tries to show some of their humanity, only to revert to concluding that everyone - even children - are evil anti-Americans.

This is unfortunate, but luckily does not completely wipe out the positives of the first half, in which the film is a very compelling and interesting look at determining the guilty parties behind such an awful attack.

If only Berg had confidence in this portion of the film enough to see it through to the end without relying on every cliche in the book.