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Left Politics, Middle East, Right Stuff
By bukkhead | January 15, 2008
FILM REVIEW: ‘THE KINGDOM’
Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan
Directed by Peter Berg
Rated R
110 mins.
People are going to compare The Kingdom to Syriana, and I think that misses the point. It would be sort of like comparing Braveheart with Michael Clayton. You can go ahead and compare Braveheart with Rob Roy. If you want, compare Syriana to The Bourne Identity, even (although that’s a stretch). But just because The Kingdom and Syriana are both political, set in the Middle East, and putting an ugly face on disaster (it needs an ugly face put on it?) doesn’t mean the movies are comparable.
The Kingdom is about a team of FBI agents who go to the Middle East to investigate a bombing at an American military housing complex. Of course, they can’t just go there, but have to play the politics game in order to get there. In my opinion, the movie could have done well with more of this. Afterall, we know about the personal tragedies the little people experience at the long-armed hands of the power elite. We’ve been watching films about soldiers and citizens since film was invented. Now it’s time to see why the game allows those politicians to be so long-armed in the first place.
This is a movie that struggles to get up enough momentum to be an action film, but wants to make sure the action is not merely gratuitous. What the viewer is subjected to is part war commentary, part detective story, part thriller. And it’s not character driven, which is too bad, because Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and Chris Cooper would have otherwise made for some damn fine chemistry. Instead, Jamie wears sunglasses,Jennifer scowls, Jason cracks a few jokes, and Chris plays in the mud.
And yet, for all of these failings, the movie managed to entertain for an hour and a half. Maybe it’s director Peter Berg, who got more than was probably deserved out of Collateral and Smokin’ Aces. Maybe it’s screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan, who also delivered Lions for Lambs. Heck, maybe it was the editor. At any rate, there’s a little something here for everyone: the action guy will like parts of it, the political guy will like parts of it, the war story guy will like parts of it.
So maybe that’s the take-away, the reason to see the movie, the correct filter by which to pass judgment. Its an ensemble cast, so why not have an ensemble audience. In our Mtv-stained society, conversations jump from subject to subject as much as cameras jump from angle to angle. After watching The Kingdom, a group of friends could spend time on a variety of topics, starting with or going back to the movie: the hypocrisy of political passion, the perversity of religious righteousness, the way Jennifer Garner looks in a dirty sweaty t-shirt, the Screen Actors Guild award the movie was nominated for: “Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture.”
Or pick your own pecadillo, and watch it by yourself. You could do worse with a DVD rental.
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