The Kingdom

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

They cannot talk, their mouth is full of oil.
An unknown UN delegate after Golda Meir speech when nobody rose to answer her.

The film opens with narration recalling events that led to 9/11 and with description of the potential role of Saudi Arabia kingdom in preparation of the attack, financing the terrorists and abetting terrorist activities since then. It also brings up the fact that oil washes guilt in many eyes, and some of those eyes might well be part of the US government.

It is years after 9/11 and all is business as usual. The oil companies are getting richer, Saudi Arabia's royal family is getting richer, the terrorists are killing people and the sun is shining at it all.

It's also a picnic time for the employees of oil companies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and during the soft ball game a whole mayhem opens, with terrorists shooting at everybody and finally blowing the place up in clouds of flames and dust.

Among the large number of dead is a Special FBI Agent. When this is confirmed, his Washington colleagues, FBI investigators, want to go to Riyadh to investigate the crime committed there. Their idea goes against standing policy of both countries, The US and Saudi Arabia, treat terrorism with military response.

Film's FBI, and by proxy the filmmakers, open a question whether or not it might be more efficient to treat terrorists as criminals, and to apply investigative criminology techniques to find the guilty.

Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) leads the team, Janet Mayes, forensics examiner (Jennifer Garner), Grant Sykes, explosives expert (Chris Cooper) and Adam Leavitt, intelligence analyst (Jason Bateman) to a five days investigation in Riyadh, where among culture clashes, teary sentimentality, manipulative actions of the US Embassy representative Damon Schmidt (Jeremy Piven) and the babysitters turned helpers, Col. Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom) and Sgt. Haytham (Ali Suliman), set to be representatives of growing uneasiness in the Kingdom, the film slowly dissolves all the credibility it might have had in order to pack in as much action as possible.

To give it credit, the action scenes are meticulously planned and well executed but there is so many of them, they are so fast and serve so little purpose that it seems like made to order bang bang wrapped in well rehearsed rhetoric.

Had the film skipped the made in Hollywood corny trademark of father-son love scenes as an attempt on humanizing Jamie Foxx's character and opted instead for exploration of the real human trauma of the Asharaf Barhom and Ali Suliman's characters, and had the remaining FBI agents shown at least some sorrow for victims other than their own, it might have been better film.

If the ties among the oil, business and politics had shown some depth to them and provided a layered background, we might have had an important film. As it is, we have an action movie empty of anything else.

Directed by Peter Berg. Screenplay, Matthew Michael Carnahan.

Ronald Fleury - Jamie Foxx
Grant Sykes - Chris Cooper
Janet Mayes - Jennifer Garner
Adam Leavitt - Jason Bateman
Col. Faris Al Ghazi - Ashraf Barhom
Sgt. Haytham - Ali Suliman
Damon Schmidt - Jeremy Piven