The Kingdom
The Kingdom begins with a visually dynamic (almost TV commercial style) narrative of a brief history of 20th century US involvement in the Middle East, specifically the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia itself. It’s common knowledge, but the sort that gets swept away for being too morally ambiguous for the color coded terror system or that muddies the black and white “us versus them” mentality that keeps our money flowing away to there. After this useful and rapid-fire information is barely processed, we proceed to the part of the movie where our heroes say what they need to do and are then prevented from doing it. An inexcusably long amount of time passes, then they do it, and the movie we came to see actually begins.
Basically, The Kingdom is a simple whodunit in political thriller drag. We have “stock” whodunit characters (the fainting female) tarted up in characters impossible for such a personality to sustain (a squeamish medical examiner). We have comic relief who has to double for our audience representative (Jason Bateman) in getting the explanations fed to us, but then he serves no purpose: why would the intelligence analyst be the most clueless? We also have the bumbling cops (Saudi military or police, I never quite was clear on that) who impede Sergeant Marples and Captain Poirot. Oh but we forgot to cast a Miss Marples! Is it Chris Cooper, the gruff guy yelling at the bumbling authorities? Is it Jamie Foxx, doing whatever he does? Ultimately, all the story - which could have been an interesting exploration o a culture clash during a sensitive investigation with all kinds of unprecedented political complications - all this ends up being overturned by a convention as ancient as that part of the world: The deus ex machina. Finally after all is said and done, The Kingdom ends on a Message. This is somewhat vexing.
The Kingdom is also the first movie where I really noticed and was annoyed by shaky-cam (Blair Witch? Whatever!) The action, as per current cinematic trends, was shot far too close-up and choppy, and the camera jiggles like it’s on a fanny pack in the New York Marathon.
So why did I rate the movie Rental with Snacks? I gave it this rating because when I compared the filmgoing experience of the Kingdom to that of Michael Clayton that same day, The Kingdom came out on top as being “sufficiently entertaining.” It was linear, things happened, and I experienced moments of tension and interest. Probably that is not the blurb that will get quoted on the DVD box, but for my money, I can’t really complain that much. This movie held my interest and gave me a taste of a mysterious region of the world, with a useful history lesson at the beginning. Entertainment-wise, it was pretty much exactly what I expected. Plus Jason Bateman was in it, so that’s always a plus.
MPAA Rating R-intense graphic violence, language
Release date 9/28/07
Time in minutes 110
Director Peter Berg
Studio Universal Pictures
