Review of The Kingdom (2007) by Edith N — 20 Apr 2010

A Shorthand Version of a Conflict Most Americans Don't Understand Anyway.

I must give this much credit at least to the makers of this film. At the beginning, a chronology of US-Saudi relations is given. There are a couple of transposed dates, and of course the whole thing is vastly oversimplified, but for a beginning sequence rapidly followed by a lot of gunfire and explosions, it's not bad. At least it tries to explain in terms the average American can understand that there was actually some history involved. Now, the film doesn't show issues as being quite as complicated as they really are and have been, but at least it makes a stab at it. For all their other failings, many of the Saudis portrayed are human. They don't tend to be perfectly good or perfectly evil. There even seems to be an attempt to show why there are complications between our countries, something we have a hard time accepting, especially when we don't come across well.

At a company picnic in Saudi Arabia, a group of terrorists open fire. They are dressed as Saudi police. One of them, while directing people to "safety," blows himself up. Later, as the survivors are gathered in a building together, they blow up the building and kill even more people. After much dealing which I didn't really understand, a group of FBI investigators are sent to find the terrorist cell. Because that makes sense. Anyway, off go Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper), Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman) to Saudi Arabia, where they attempt to investigate a crime with their hands completely tied. There is fundamental distrust of the Saudi police, the Saudi army. They both distrust each other and the FBI. Meanwhile, all the Saudi people who aren't actually princes live in the same kind of living conditions, slums which breed terrorists, while the American families live in middle class splendour.

Yet apparently, the walls in Saudi Arabia are the strongest in the world. These are the big guns these people are firing. You could fit a golf ball into a lot of the divots these bullets leave, but Our Heroes--including Friendly Saudi Policeman Colonel Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), whom we know to be a good guy because he's a fan of the Incredible Hulk--are able to hide behind walls and car doors without fear. Provided they stay away from doorways, which get shredded. These are movie-style gun battles, the flashy kind wherein snipers hundreds of feet away get picked off by Our Heroes, yet the snipers themselves always miss unless they're aiming at extras. Jamie Foxx is able to throw a grenade far enough away so that they aren't hurt well after it should have gone off and killed them all. And, as always, the scenes where we learn this go on far, far too long. Probably a lot of people the film is actually aimed at disagree, but I feel this is a failing of the genre.

These are not people who Hate Us For Our Freedoms. It is, frankly, pushy of us to insist that only we can properly investigate the crime. Admittedly, Americans get blown up in other countries a lot more often than people from other countries get blown up in America. However, if an embassy were blown up in DC, Americans would have a screaming fit if the country whose embassy it was sent their own investigators. And honestly, American law enforcement would have better connections anyway. None of these investigators speak Arabic. Heck, Chris Cooper does the ever popular "If I speak loudly and slowly, they'll understand me." Now, we do what we do with the best of intentions, and I don't mean to claim that we don't. And heaven knows our intervention in certain wars has at least helped turn the tide. On the other hand, a lot of that was in Europe. We don't understand other cultures. In some places, we don't even try. For heaven's sake, a lot of Americans think one of our missions in the Middle East ought to be missionary work and are outright offended that the military won't allow soldiers to proselytize.

The director's cut is said to have gotten more into character development, and maybe that's what this movie is missing. The way it seems to work is that there is all the time in the world for gunfights and none for conversation. But mostly what I thought about was the international incident these people would have caused in various places. An American investigator beating up a Saudi officer? That would be a big diplomatic flap, and it's odd that the movie doesn't seem to know that. Cooper's character seems casually racist, though I don't think he's intended to be; I think he's the one who says that there are no fire codes in Saudi Arabia. At that, the fact that these investigators are literally locked into a gym would be a complication neither government would want. It says in the film that the investigation would be like investigating a crime on Mars, and that statement alone is kind of worrisome. After all, Saudis are still human.