A Balanced View of Present-Day Chaos

"The Kingdom" (2007)
Directed by: Peter Berg (Very Bad Things, The Rundown, Friday Night Lights)
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, Ashraf Barhom
Running Time: 110 minutes
Rut's Rating: 3.5/5

With the times that we live in, one might think that a film like "The Kingdom" is in bad taste or the general public "just isn't ready for a film like this." In my opinion, you couldn't be more wrong. This well-told story of an unforgiveable act of terrorism grips you from the start and doesn't let go. It serves as a way of telling us, TEACHING us, that life is unpredictable and every second counts. Director Peter Berg has created a story that reflects society in all its brutal realism. This film could have easily taken the right-wing, white-people-good, foreigners-bad route, but it doesn't let itself become that. Instead, it shows two different nations struggling for peace and safety in a world that perhaps doesn't have it.

Jamie Foxx stars as Ronald Fleury, leader of an elite FBI team. When nearly 100 people are killed in a violent explosion, Fleury and his team travel to Saudi Arabia to investigate who is behind the brutal slayings. While there, the team partners with Saudi officials, led by Colonel Faris Al Ghazi, played wonderfully by Ashraf Barhom in a role that I believe could by Oscar-worthy. Both teams feel each other out at first, sometimes having a bit of conflict. Ultimately, both teams begin to unravel the mystery behind the bombing and work together. Foxx is born for this type of role. He's calm, collected, and his performance shows that. The rest of his team consists of Grant Sykes, played by Oscar winner Chris Cooper; Adam Leavitt, played by Jason Bateman. He's the somewhat "comic relief" in scenes that perhaps are deemed too dramatic. And Jennifer Garner as Janet Mayes. Honestly, I'm not a fan of hers at all, and it looked to me that Garner didn't have a clue what she was doing in this film. She does a lot of crying and covering her ears when guns fire. Do actual FBI agents do that? As well, Jeremy Piven plays a PR executive intent on keeping things going smoothly and without any troubles. I love Piven, but he's pretty much just playing Ari from "Entourage" here. But hey, that's probably what PR people are like anyway. And look for a cameo from country music heavyweight Tim McGraw as a grieving husband whose wife was killed in the bomb blast.

"The Kingdom" has a message, and usually I hate it when movies try to do that. People go to the theater and the multiplex because they wanna stuff their faces with overpriced snacks, kick up their feet and forget their everyday problems for an hour and a half, two hours, whatever. But I found the message in "The Kingdom" to be right. Almost accepting. This isn't a movie that shoves the issues or politics in your face. It just shows you that they're happening all around you, that the world doesn't stop because of your own problems. There's a scene in particular involving Foxx's character Fleury and the son of a man killed near the beginning of the film that I found incredibly emotional. It also isn't the only time Fleury encounters a father-less boy.

This film obviously isn't for everyone. If you like period dramas with guys in white wigs and women in puffy dresses, this isn't for you. But if you want a clenching, pulse-pounding story that doesn't pull the wool over your eyes and tells it like it is, then you'll enjoy the film.

Don't let the papers and CNN give you the news all the time. Enter "The Kingdom".