Review of The Kingdom (2007) by The Fat Man Q — 24 Aug 2011

This movie was just the pick me up to keep wading through the generic garbage that pollutes the theaters on a daily basis.

I really really wanted this movie to be bad. Between Booty Call's Jamie Fox and horse-faced Jennifer Garner, I was in the mood to be disgusted. Color me wrong (I think it's a shade of puce). What I got was a crime drama set around the terrorist turmoil of the middle east. It was fast-paced and lighthearted at times, and the cast was right for that type of dialog.

The cinematography = fantastic. It was everything Miami Vice wanted to be, but just couldn't pull off. I hope it hurt Mann watching Peter Berg pull off a good shaky-cam action flick.

With so much anti-war sentiment going on, I was surprised to see how unpolitical they decided to go with the story. It simply stated things as they were and moved forward with a very probable storyline. Contrast that with just the previews for Lions for Lambs and you'll see the kind of heavy handed scriptwriting I'm talking about. Is it wrong that I lay in bed at night sighing happily at the prospects of a writers strike?

Other interesting note: based in Saudi Arabia, but shot in the UAE. I'm sure they were thrilled to throw SA over the rack and portray them as a terrorist state. Nice.

If you had a chance to catch this in theaters, good for you! Watch it anyway, but it loses a little bit of the intensity unless you've invested in a good system.