The Kingdom is a Quick War Commentary with Hollywood Action Glimmer - Movie Review
movie review by efrain gomez
Everything I know about history I learned from the movies. “The Kingdom”, starring Jamie Foxx (”Ray”), Jennifer Garner (”13 Going on 30″), and Chris Cooper (”Breach”), serves up an audio-visual history blast of the last 70 years of oil relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Thanks to the movie, I’ll never have to research it myself.
All joking aside, “The Kingdom” really is a cool, thought-provoking action-war drama told in a simple tale of the good guys against the bad guys, but with a bit of “an eye for an eye might make the world blind” after-taste.
With only five days access and heavy restriction from local law enforcement, a team of U.S. special agents investigate a brutal terrorist attack on an American oil-worker community in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. With the justice-seeking guidance of their protector and host, Saudi Colonel Al-Ghazi, they are able to get closer to the truth, but at the cost of entering the master-mind’s deadly territory.
After the 60-second history lesson in the beginning, the movie sort of lulls about with the characters talking and walking around a bomb site. Some minor plot points move the story along, but the middle of the movie seems to mosey, taking its time, making sure we’ve had our fill of footage that looks like the camera person was on roller coaster the whole time.
On the other hand, the slow pace and dizzying visuals may be intentional. Maybe we’re supposed to feel disoriented during the silence and sadness in between the battles. It’s bloody, scary, and there is definitely no glamour in showers of bullets and car bombs.
The ending solidifies the movie into a recommendable film because of its small, non-aggressive commentary on war and the current situations in Iraq and Afghanistan involving the U.S. There aren’t any potshots at America or Saudi Arabia; there is simply a bigger message going on about the nature of humanity on both “sides”, and the futility of war. A character mentions in the movie that when we find a bad guy, there should be no questioning as to why or how the bad guy committed the crime, a simple bullet should solve the problem. But in the end of “The Kingdom” we realize that sometimes swift vengeance doesn’t equal swift justice.
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