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To kingdom come

An action film that becomes a Middle East Western
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By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
October 10th, 2007 issue

 

COURTESY PHOTO
Cutting down traffic. Jamie Foxx takes to the blistering streets of Riyadh.
 
The Kingdom

Directed by Peter Berg
With Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Chris Cooper, Ashraf Barhom and Danny Huston

The “kingdom” of the title is, of course, that glossiest of Neolithic theocracies, Saudi Arabia. Peter Berg’s film is a fictionalized account of the Riyadh compound bombings of 2003, when al-Qaeda suicide bombers (the hometown team) managed to infiltrate a compound for Westerners in the Saudi city and unleashed carnage.
As this is Hollywood perched on the storyteller’s stool, the events becomes far more dramatically catastrophic. Why bother with a tragedy where only 35 were killed when hundreds of extras scattered about on the ground is so much more effective? But The Kingdom does manage to be better than one’s expectations, especially after viewing the trailer, which seemed to suggest that we were in store for some war porn courtesy of MTV.
Berg’s film is frequently gripping, and is embedded with some good actors. But, it is also rather purblind when it comes to the ties that bind the West to the wastelands of the one true god.
Actually, the film does begin with a useful primer on how we became entangled with the mullah-ridden tribes of Arabia Deserta. As Alan Greenspan helpfully reminded us recently in another context, it was all about oil, and shockingly still is.
In a compound housing U.S. families connected to oil companies, a vicious suicide attack kills many. As emergency teams descend on the site, we suddenly shift from smoke to smother as a far larger bomb goes off, killing scores more.
With one of its own lost in the attack, the FBI roars into action. Special agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) demands the right to accompany a crack crew to Saudi Arabia to investigate the crime, secure in the knowledge that the Saudis will botch everything. Though Fleury is supported by his superiors, the U.S. attorney general (Danny Huston) is adamantly opposed to the idea on political grounds — rightly so, as he sees the arrival of further Americans onto the solemn sands of Islam’s birthplace as added provocation.
However, through backdoor maneuvering, Fleury manages to skirt the attorney general and fly out with his colleagues Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper) and Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), a forensics expert whose presence will make a nice contrast to the Saudi women, whose own career choices run from pack mule to broodmare.
The Saudi officials, along with their begowned betters of the kleptocracy, are naturally as inept as feared, so it will take some American know-how to get things done. Tension builds until a sympathetic Saudi colonel, Faris Al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), takes the Americans under charge and helps them with their investigation. This will lead all of them to stumble into a vast terrorist network.
What follows is a proxy war, a Hollywood attempt to take on the real country behind al-Qaeda and 9/11 in lieu of the U.S. government’s ignominious war of choice. As both Tinseltown and the Islamic world have embraced explosionism as artistic expression, there are plenty of bangs for your koruny in what is finally a Western in the Middle East, as a posse of Americans cleans up the territory with the help of a faithful Tonto.
For an action thriller, the performances are quite strong, particularly Cooper, Garner and Barhom. Foxx is a fine actor, though here he seems to be auditioning for future Denzel Washington roles. The film also bravely offers a critique of Saudi culture, with its tribal strife and frothing religiosity, something seldom attempted in petroholic America.
Yet some cowardice persists, as the real question is never broached: “What are we doing there?” Cut and bruised, our FBI heroes return to Washington after learning some valuable life lessons on their trip. But the film ends, as it must, on a pessimistic note, where we see that the seeds of this deadly culture clash have already been sown in the next generation of Saudis.
How better it would be to finally grant the Arabs their own tumult; to extract ourselves rather than their oil, and let them get on with whining and ululating at each other. Berg’s film, like most Western governments, can only shrug at the proposition. Obviously, we are to be shackled to this bloody oil business until kingdom come.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (10/10/2007):

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