Say what you will about Peter Berg, but he sure doesn’t like to make things easy on himself. While often styled as “the thinking man’s Michael Bay” thanks to the fact that he usually a similar explosion/edit per minute rate to the Lord of Bayhem despite making more socially and politically more mature movies, Berg’s films tend to skirt on current, global troubles and thus frequently wanders into touchier territory. However, with 2007s The Kingdom, he seemed determined to give himself a more difficult balancing act than usual when he tells the story of an Al-Qaeda bombing of an American oil company housing compound located in Saudi Arabia. With the world still raw from the events of 9/11, The Kingdom presents us with a tense, fish out of water thriller that sees American FBI agents having to stand against hostile, local law enforcement in order to see that justice prevails. If you were to set a foot wrong, you would have something that quite easily could descend into flag waving xenophobia, so can Berg and a packed cast pull off a balancing act for the ages?
After the authorities gather after an Al-Qaeda terrorist attack on a baseball game, they soon find that this devastating attack was only a set up for a bigger, more brutal bombing designed to cause even more death and destruction. After some of their own were killed in the blast, the FBI start jumping through the requisite hoops in order to get the go ahead to put more boots on the ground in Saudi Arabia in order to investigate the bombing and give it a much needed, forensic once over to determine the hows and whos of such a grim crime.
However, this is where things get to become extra complicated, because while Special Agent Ronald Fleury and his similarly determined team are eager to get started, people in the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. State Department try to hinder their request for politically squeamish reasons. Eventually, Fleury gets his wish and heads over to Saudi Arabia along with forensic examiner Janet Mayes, intelligence analyst Adam Leavitt and bomb technician Grant Sykes; but despite being given a sympathetic guide in the form of Colonal Faris al-Ghazi, thr team soon finds that their efforts to do their job is being thwarted at every turn.
Be it a matter of safety, claustrophobic red tape, restrictive rules brought about because of cultural differences, or just good old mistrust, Fleury finds himself butting heads with virtually everyone as al-Ghazi desperately tries to smooth things over.
But just how can anyone manage to commit to a forensic investigation of a bomb site when they aren’t allowed to do any actual investigating? If some accord can’t be reached somehow, the the men responsible will never be caught – but after the budding friendship between Fleury and al-Ghazi starts opening a few doors, it seems that terrorist leader Abu Hamza has yet another attack planned…
The Kingdom is one of those movies that seems to change depending what you want to get out of it. If you’re looking for an insightful look at tense relations between America and the Middle East, the movie proves to be about as in-depth as a thirty second YouTube video, however, if you are willing to have all the political issues simply play out as a back drop to provide extra drama for a stark, edgy, procedural film, them Berg does his job amicably enough. However, like a lot of films that strives to highlight the similarity between us while both parading around the violent differences, The Kingdom tends to trip up on all the typical potholes that exist.
As a result, simplistic approaches and tokenism both raise their head as the movie bends over backwards to muddy the waters, but not too much to lose a sizable audience. We have mourning Americans bashing the Muslim faith out of grief; we have shifty US politicians being all slimy and underhanded; we have the Saudi military brutalising their own people as their attempts at law enforcement prove to be way less refined that the FBI; and we have hatred on both sides of the equation. However, for all of Berg’s attempts to balance the narrative, The Kingdom not only has nothing particularly original to say, but it’s own plot precludes it from being a memorable procedural movie because the whole point of the film is that our heroes aren’t being allowed to do their jobs right by a suspicious regime.
However, when the director is allowed to put racial politics aside and just focus fully on the final third, we find a much more confident and comfortable Berg who manages to captialise on the tension he’s built so far and delivers something of a third act barn burner. Yes, I understand that ending the movie with an American vs. terrorist shootout in order to keep the head of a weirdly out-of-place Jason Bateman still attached to his shoulders pretty much undoes much of what the movie was trying to initially achieve, but on a purely visceral level, the blaring staccato of machine guns and the butt-clenching use of RPGs help deliver a top-notch extended action sequence. I guess we should give Berg credit for holding it in for so long and as a result, the entire sequence is spectacular enough to add creedence to those Michael Bay comparisons (for the action, at least).
As for the people who have to fire those bullets – well, they do just fine. Attempting to solidify some of the points the film us trying to make is the solid friendship that builds between Jamie Foxx’s Fleury and Ashraf Barhom who’s easy chemistry manages to make thing feel nicely natural. However, elsewhere the other cast seem to have less room to maneuver that their characters. Jennifer Garner gets to aquit herself magnificently during the action sequences, but prior to that, all she gets to do is scowl disapprovingly while locals freak out that a woman is doing the job; elsewhere Bateman seems to be playing a junior member of the team despite plainly being around the same age as Foxx – but as least he gets to fling some sarcasm around. In comparison, Chris Cooper just gets to be a grizzled old timer who revels in getting his hands dirty which seems a little bit of a waste considering this was only four years after his Oscar win.
Still, despite the film having some noticeable flaws in both it’s plotting and it’s attempts to crack an extremely complex, political hot button topic, it’s heart does seem to want to be in the right place even if it doesn’t have the dexterity to pull it off. However, at a risk of falling into the same trap – those action sequences are admittedly pretty amazing…
A gripping, but ultimately unfocused thriller is almost detailed by its attempts to negotiate and simplify some pretty choppy, political waters. However, taken purely as an atypical procedural thriller with top-shelf action sequences, The Kingdom tends to reign.
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