The Kingdom
I have to say that I thought they stopped making films like this. The Kingdom, directed by Peter Berg (The Rundown, Friday Night Lights), is, according to screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan, designed to demonstrate what a “murder mystery would look like on Mars.” “Mars,” in The Kingdom, is Saudi Arabia so I guess that would make the Arabs in the film to be “Martians.” Fair enough assessment of where Berg’s film is going, I suppose. I only wish I had actually read that fairly illuminating phrase before I had decided to see the film.
The Kingdom stars Jamie Foxx, one of the most overrated actors of all time, as Special Agent Ronald Fleury. After terrorists attack foreign works in Riyadh (that’s on Mars, for the less geographically inclined), Fleury gets a team together to go investigate the crime and to go kill the bad guys. Of course, the FBI is bogged down in red tape and disturbing delays like diplomacy and rules, so the team that Fleury gets together has to kind of “sneak” over to Mars and get things done. Fleury takes along Special Agent Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman), and Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper) to go investigate this issue on the ground in Saudi Arabia. Fleury’s job is to do what no capable Saudi Arabian investigative force could do and solve the crime in less than a week before his time runs out. Okay.
Obviously a film of this nature is going to turn some heads and divide some people, but that’s important. The film gets marks for creating discussion, although the discussion the film created within my framework wasn’t really a battle of “right vs. wrong” or some sort of cultural clash. It was, instead, more along the lines of “what were they thinking?” The Kingdom is a few parts splashy action and a few parts “smart” dialogue, making it spread out to seem like a sort of elongated CSI or 24 episode on television. Naturally, Berg’s film attempts to separate from the herd by providing “information” and “insight” into why things are the way they are in the “Kingdom.” This is done through a montage of animation during the opening credits that briefly, concisely, and “clearly” explain the problems in the Middle East. Phew! Thanks to Peter Berg’s stunning revelations, we can all go home!
Perhaps the most interesting thing about The Kingdom is to watch the aftershocks of critical reception. It sort of runs like a Litmus test, in a way. American reception to Berg’s piece of tripe was rather middle of the road. At latest check, The Kingdom ranks somewhere just above 50% at Rotten Tomatoes, the reviewer’s aggregate website. Some critics were outspoken in that they found the film well-paced and thrilling, while others simply found the film to be a rehash of television thrillers, with one brilliant critic calling The Kingdom the equivalent of “CSI: Riyadh.” Still other critics acquainted the film with a sort of “imaginary do-over” that allows Americans to “get things right” in that particular region of the world, which we lovingly refer to as “Mars.” I guess if bypassing diplomacy and storming in and solving problems over there with tremendous cultural and political ignorance symbolizes a “do-over that gets things right,” we must have really fouled up on the incidental try.
The film’s reception in the Middle East was decidedly less measured and even-handed. New York Post critic Lou Lumenick was dead on when he expressed that “Hollywood provides the Islamic world another reason to hate America with The Kingdom.” Sadly, he’s right. The Middle Eastern press had a field day, with Asia Online calling it a “pseudo-realist action movie that succeeds only if we degrade ourselves to adolescent Americans’ perception of world affairs.” The reality behind The Kingdom is that this is another example of American filmmakers exporting “Rambo-like” mentality to other parts of the world and tilting the hand, so to speak, to display just how ignorant they can be. When I see people stating that they “learned something about the Middle East by watching The Kingdom,” it makes me cringe.
All political idiocies aside, The Kingdom fails on other levels. The characters are far from compelling. Garner, Foxx, Cooper, and Bateman simply serve as placeholders in roles that just about anyone else could have played about the same way. They’re wooden, boring, and tepid in just about every way. I didn’t care about a single character in the film, to be honest. Garner is strained, Foxx is trying to channel every piece of his “go-to guy persona” and the rest of the characters are given too little to do to matter. Jeremy Piven’s character, by the way, is just terrible and represents the same character he always plays. It’s annoying.
The action, as directed by Berg, is cookie cutter stuff that relies on carbon copy notions of “Middle Eastern reality” as played out through numerous other stereotypes we’ve all seen before. This sort of “seen one, seem ‘em all” mentality runs rampant through The Kingdom and, instead of being fresh and idealistic, it runs the film into the ground and makes it boring and disastrous. The Kingdom is directed in the style known to Peter Berg fans: shaky, wobbly, and dizzying. Yes, I know this is designed to create anxiousness and worry within tense situations. But when this technique is overused and has no basis for its operation, it becomes ridiculous. Whereas Greengrass’ incredibly exciting The Bourne Ultimatum uses “shaky cam” stuff to much delight, Berg’s The Kingdom uses it poorly.
Peter Berg and his team claimed, in the press notes, that The Kingdom wasn’t “political.” This is problematic considering the idea that, at every corner and every turn, Berg and his team waste no time in expressing just how much contempt they have for the Middle East. Saudi Arabian cops are all inept and only skilled at torturing their captives. American FBI agents, on the other hand, calmly go about picking up evidence and solving the case without asking for trouble. They’re the pictures of ultimate grace in the Middle East and, if it wasn’t for Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner, that whole region of the world would be screwed. Ain’t that the truth.
Trailer:
