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Peter Berg, The Kingdom

by Chris Flippo
09/27/2007

"There's no such thing as an anti-war film." -Francois Truffaut

Don't let the shaky camera work and the Saudi Arabian backdrop fool you. The Kingdom is a Hollywood action movie. That would be fine in some cases, but in a movie that visually references 9/11 and journalist Daniel Pearl, this all just comes across as shallow, insensitive filmmaking.

After an American facility is bombed, the FBI assembles a team led by Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) to investigate the tragedy. As the team unravels the clues, they place themselves more and more at risk. As the case comes to a close, the team finds themselves the target.

As the plot kicked in and the Saudi Arabians were killed by the FBI, the audience that surrounded me began cheering as the body count rose. Sure, at this point in the film, they are characters who have done wrong, but is it right to cheer as they are killed? Truffaut once wrote it is impossible to make an anti-war movie, because war is exciting when put on film. The Kingdom doesn't even make an effort to resist this impulse.

I know you may be thinking that its not the filmmaker's fault that they responded in such a way, but I believe the audience was only reacting in a way in which they were conditioned by the film. There are few times when an audience does not “get” the film. Most of the time, it’s the filmmakers who do not get the audience.

Take an action sequence in the one of the later reels. Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner) has lost her gun and is fighting a Saudi Arabian soldier in hand-to-hand combat. After a brief struggle, Janet grabs a knife and stabs the solider in the head. Handled differently, this sequence could have been emotionally exhausting. Instead, the scene comes across as a special R-rated episode of Alias.

I could have done without the movie's excesses. Jason Bateman has too many action-movie one-liners (I have never seen an audience laugh so much during a film about war in the Middle East). Also, I know its sunny, but Jamie Foxx could have done without those ridiculous Top Gun sunglasses. It’s a little unnerving to see him standing over seven dead Saudi Arabian soldiers and putting on his glasses. Sure, Jamie Foxx is cool, but there are other movies that can express how cool he is. A drama about Middle-Eastern conflict is not one of them.

Ultimately, there is a great movie buried inside The Kingdom. It’s a movie that would deal with corruption, greed, heroism, and hope. However, as its stands, the film is not interested in politics and culture clash so much as it is interested in its pyrotechnics. In the end, The Kingdom is only at war with itself.

A Final Note: After doing some research, I found out that the film was re-cut and shortened from two and a half hours to an hour and fifty minutes. This gives me some hope. It may be that the good movie that is buried within The Kingdom is still out there, lost on the editing room floor.

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