All hell breaks loose in The Kingdom and FBI Special Agent (played by Jamie Foxx) has to take things into his own hands

I will admit it. I am a huge fan of Friday Night Lights - the hit NBC TV show based on the film based on the film by the same name which was based on a book (I think by the same name as well…)

Peter Berg directed Friday Night Lights (the film) and is the head creative honcho on the succesful TV series. He is also the director of The Kingdom and I think his TV stint has served his film-making techniques a bit as well as his casting choices. But why shouldn’t TV work influence film-making. One isn’t inferior to the other (OK, fine there’s a lot of crap on TV and a TV screen is much smaller and all that, but really, TV is good especially if we are talking about Friday Night Lights.) And Berg makes no secret of this by utilizing many of the same musical cues and camera-work moves that he uses on Friday Night Lights as well as casting two of his most promising cast-members from the show – Kyle Chandler (who plays FBI Agent Francis Manner) and the beautiful Minka Kelly (who plays the school-teacher to Jamie Foxx’s character’s son.)

Additionally, Michael Mann is a producer on The Kingdom and you can tell that there are some Michael Mann sequences in the film that inform the type of action and realism that the action and violence have. (I’m sure he developed the film for himself but handed it off to Berg at some point…) The action sequences that are Mann-esque are powerful and last for quite a bit of time. Some sequences towards the end clock in at nearly thirty minutes of guns and explosions and tension. I like that kind of stuff. I prefer for the violence to be real and the gun-fire and tension to be long, torid and unexpected than something un-real or super-real. That’s me. I’m that kind of guy.

The Kingdom is an interesting film with strong performances from lead actors Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman as well as Ashrof Barhom (plays Colonel Al Ghazi investigating the terrorist incident inside Saudi Arabia) and Ali Suliman (who plays Seargeant Haytham) and Jeremy Piven (as Ari Gold from Entourage) as a US diplomat from the US Embassy in Riyaddh. The look of the film is brilliant. The locations (although reportedly shot mostly in Phoenix and some work was done in Dubai) are realistic as well as the steadi-cam which shakes and moves along with the action (to the dismay of some, but I don’t mind a head-ache afterwards if the movie’s plot and quality merit it.)

Essentially the story is a terrorism story about a group of extremists within the Saudi Arabian community who aim to strike at American targets in that country to discourage the cooperation between the US government and the Saudi Royal family. In reality this is a very feasible plot that (given the fact that most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudi nationals) is more likely to happen than not. It also shows how difficult it is for the US to work with Saudi Arabia and within Saudi Arabia given the fact that although Saudi Arabia is viewed as a sort of psuedo-American ally, they have very little freedoms, and share very little in common with the United States.

In essence, the Royal family of Saudi Arabia and the United States share common enemies (Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Osama Bin Laden who is a Saudi national himself) and therefore the ties between the two countries have been forged militarily. But there’s not much else in common and FBI Agents Jamie Foxx and company realize this as soon as they enable themself to enter the country.

One of the highlights of Peter Berg’s The Kingdom is a 30 minute action sequence towards the end of the film

Without spoiling what I think is a well balanced ending and message I will say that I recommend that people see this movie to gain a better understanding of what the US government is doing in the middle eastern region of the globe as well as the prospect of being entertained and provoked with a thoughtful examination of a likely terrorist scenario beyond our country’s borders but at targets that are inately American.

3.5 Stars out of 5

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