Thy Kingdom come

I’ve been putting off watching The Kingdom for a while, because I usually need to be in the mood to watch war movies. On a particularly uneventful day, I crawled on the couch with some hot cocoa and started watching the complex film starring Jamie Foxx, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner and Chris Cooper. The cast was pretty spectacular all around, and I was amazed at how many stars filled smaller roles in this Peter Berg film. One of the stars who had minimal roles in the film was 30 Days of Night’s Danny Huston, Entourage’s Jeremy Piven, and Burn After Reading’s Richard Jenkins. The Kingdom is not your traditional war movie. For one, it isn’t army versus army or insurgents versus liberators. The story is also dedicated to telling the “enemy” side of the situation, if only minimally.

Basically, The Kingdom revolves around Saudi Arabia, in a location that I garnered was a US base housing American families and some US troops. Muslim terrorists sneak into the area and just start blowing shit up, and it looks to be an inside job. The Arabian government and military then refuse to allow any American forces or investigators to come into the country to find the culprits, and this angers the FBI. Jamie Foxx plays FBI Detective Fleury, who leads a small team who goes into Saudi Arabia to investigate what happened. He is assisted by Arabian military officials, led by Col Al Ghazi (played brilliantly by Israeli actor Ashraf Barhom), but Fleury and his team do not know who to trust in a country filled with people who hate Americans.

Peter Berg did an absolutely amazing job with this film, and he restored my faith in the war movie. He basically redefined the whole ‘war movie’ image, and injected elements of Black Hawk Down into a Rendition-type movie. He was able to depict the technical, red tape stuff that is involved in international investigations such as these, particularly terrorist investigations, but he was also able to include some hardcore suspense and action. During the first few moments of the film, there were parts when I was so taken aback by the heartless brutality of the terrorists that at one point I just dropped an expletive out of nowhere. I admire that Peter Berg was able to handle the story of the locals delicately and appropriately. I thought it was a wise decision on his and the writers’ parts to tell the story on the othe side of the fence, even though the story was obviously something that one cannot grasp fully, if you don’t understand how the minds of extremists work.

The performances were pretty commendable, particularly Jennifer Garner, as per usual, who kicked some ass. I’m normally not very impressed by any of Jamie Foxx’s films (and I’ve never seen Ray) but he was pretty decent in this one. Jason Bateman delivered the usual clever lines that only an Arrested Development alum can get away with. The film had an awesome cast, sensible and brilliant director, and I like that the film didn’t make the enemy into a caricature. The film also had a particularly controversial and surprising ending, though, which I’m not sure would sit well with some audiences. The ending’s message is probably closer to the truth of today, but the politically correct might not take the message too kindly. In my opinion it was a daring decision to end the film in that way, but if you’re shooting for something that is more of a fairy tale of an ending, then that ending might to sit well with you. Overall, good,  intelligent movie with great performances and daring direction.