The clash of civilizations — otherwise known as The Conflict Between Islam and Basically Everybody Else — is writ large all over The Kingdom, hot-button movie of the week.
Don't be too alarmed, though. The Kingdom is loaded with angry Muslims, but this isn't just more agitprop designed to keep us awake at night, visions of impending apocalypse dancing in our heads. Nor is it some artsy jigsaw puzzle à la Syriana, forcing us to acknowledge our complicity in that unholiest of trinities: oil, money and blood.
Well, maybe it is, just a little bit. What The Kingdom does offer, basically, is a straight forward, relatively agenda-free film — a fast-moving police procedural, with thriller and action accents — albeit one that would barely have a reason to exist were it not situated in the heart of the eternally troubled Middle East.
The film's title refers to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the story takes place, a hot spot introduced via a zippy collage of slick graphics, soundbites and pop-up facts providing a timeline of the region's history. It's a quick but effective way to bring us up to speed, a Middle East for Dummies that comes with its own terrible math: Saudi Arabia is the world's number one producer of oil, a factoid flashes upon the screen; the United States is the number one consumer of oil. Cut to a plane barreling into one of the Twin Towers, and fade to black.
The Kingdom doesn't dwell on the connections between Arab oil, Western gluttony and terrorism, but lets those links seep through the action, providing a slippery underpinning for much of what happens on screen. It's actually an act of terror that begins the film — a brutal massacre at a family picnic inside the American compound in Riyadh — and that provides the catalyst for much of what follows. The FBI is chomping at the bit to help investigate the crime, but the Saudi rulers don't particularly welcome an increased American presence on their soil, not wanting to piss off the ultra-radical Wahhabi Islamists who make up a considerable portion of the population and don't take too kindly to emissaries of The Great Satan.
Don't worry if all this seems like too much information; everything is conveniently laid out in the movie's helpful Mid-East 101 prologue, freeing up The Kingdom to concentrate on moving its plot along. A minimal four-person team of FBI agents is eventually allowed into the country, but it's clear from the moment they step onto foreign soil that no one wants them there — not their own U.S. politicians (slick Bush team players to a man, fearful of rocking the petrol boat), not the Saudi royal family (justifiably nervous about appearing "not in control") and certainly not the scores of Islamists who either perpetrated the crime in the first place or, to one extent or another, sympathize with the terrorists. Struggling to solve a mystery in a place that doesn't accept them and, at worst, wants them dead, The Kingdom's American CSI team are some of the strangest strangers in a strange land since Sidney Poitier's Mr. Tibbs.
Jamie Foxx supplies most of the movie's star power as the team's leader, with Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman in the less meaty roles of Foxx's FBI colleagues. The movie starts out at a healthy enough clip, but amps itself up considerably once the Yankee investigators show up at the crime scene, with lots of characters quickly introduced and a web of competing motivations established, encompassing various American and Saudi officials, analysts, cops, journalists, politicians and ordinary citizens.
As in Michael Winterbottom's recent A Mighty Heart, the movie functions as a crime thriller on its most basic level, with leads being followed and clues dutifully gathered up. But the investigation is inextricably bound up in East-West tensions, and, even more to the point, in the complicated relationship between moderates and murderers co-existing in Saudi Arabia, as in so many parts of the Islamic world.
The Kingdom makes a point of avoiding political grandstanding, but the movie is almost certain to be controversial, if only for its matter-of-fact detailing of ordinary, nonmilitant Muslims offering tacit support for terrorists who (following the Hamas-Hezbollah model) finance community projects while slaughtering infidel women and children. It's worth noting, though, that the film practically goes out of its way to assure us it's not in the propaganda business; for every cruel Jihadist here, there's an idyllic sequence showcasing decent, loving Muslim families praying together, sharing a meal, helping children with their homework, doing what people do everywhere as the sweetly uplifting music affirms Universal Brotherhood to the nth degree.
Meanwhile, the investigation proceeds apace, albeit a bit awkwardly, with the Americans kept at a rigorous remove from the Saudi population, not allowed to talk to witnesses without government supervision, and not even permitted to conduct a decent autopsy (since it's strictly forbidden for a non-Muslim to touch a Muslim corpse). And just as the culture clash reaches a boiling point, Foxx has a major blow-out with his Saudi counterpart, a confrontation that clears the air and allows the two men to finally work together, see each other as human beings, and eventually bond over a shared enthusiasm for The Six Million Dollar Man and other flotsam and jetsam of American pop culture.
Despite the steadily percolating tension and an urgent soundtrack that keeps promising fireworks, the first bona fide action scene doesn't materialize until well over an hour into the film — but once the bullets start flying, they don't stop until the closing credits roll. Foxx and friends abruptly shift into full battle mode, blasting away with heavy-duty assault weapons and burning up the Riyadhi roads in high-speed car chases as the Americans find themselves besieged in an Islamist enclave, and The Kingdom starts looking like an even more hellish version of Black Hawk Down.
Director Peter Berg maximizes the chaos by shooting in that intentionally jerky ADD-esque style popularized by films like United 93 and The Bourne Ultimatum, a technique that aims to present everything as somehow edgier and more "real" (although when Foxx begins single-handedly blowing away the bad guys, reality is best taken with several grains of salt; he's clearly as indestructible as any action hero).
It will probably come as small surprise that much of the movie's subtlety flies out the window during its action-packed finale and probably even less of a surprise that the Saudi royals refused to let The Kingdom be shot on their turf. The good news, though, is that Arizona and Abu Dhabi fill in just fine, and the even better news is that the movie resists the urge to completely transform itself into Die Hard.
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 2, 2007.