The Kingdom

By Connie Ogle

Its final 20 minutes are so intense that medical attention may be required, but The Kingdom is anything but mere mindless action. Though its violence is searing and brutal, the film, about four FBI agents investigating a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, shows a conscience and a brain, and if it explains things a bit simplistically at times, so much the better. The relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia remain tangled and deep, and director Peter Berg wants all of the members of his audience — many of whom will not have the patience to sit through something as dense and trying as Syriana — to understand that fact from the start.

An actor, a writer and the creative mind behind network TV’s best series, the compelling Friday Night Lights, Berg uses stark graphics in the opening credits to provide a quick but effective history of U.S./Saudi entanglements and then jumps swiftly to the meat of his story. A terrorist cell engineers a stunning, explosive attack on an oil-company picnic, indiscriminately killing American workers and their families.

In Washington, D.C., some counter-terrorist agents angry over the death of a colleague in the blast want to investigate the crime scene. The State Department says no, but, in one of the film’s more contrived moments, Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) pulls some unlikely strings, and within 24 hours the team is dispatched to "the Kingdom" for five days of forensic work.

In addition to Fleury, the team consists of a bomb technician (the always-excellent Chris Cooper); a forensics expert (Jennifer Garner, who gets to relive some of her Alias butt-kicking glory), and a wise-cracking surveillance specialist (Jason Bateman of Arrested Development) who mostly seems to be there to provide laughs. Don’t be fooled, though; the casting of Bateman may seem odd, but it works. In a movie that grows as feverish as The Kingdom defusing anxiety is necessary, and Bateman turns out to be equally adept at drama and action when the time comes. He gets a comic assist from a grayed and bespectacled Jeremy Piven (Entourage) as a nervous State Department official who just wants the Americans out of the country safely.

At first the team meets resistance from their escorts, and the film deftly illustrates the growing fish-out-of-water unease these trained professionals feel surrounded by armed police who may or may not be involved in the terrorist plot (the attackers wore Saudi police uniforms, after all).

But a police colonel (Ashraf Barhom) and his sergeant (Ali Suliman), who want the culprits to pay for the deaths of their own colleagues, soon match Fleury’s determination. The film, careful never to give in to pro-America rhetoric, uses the Arabic characters to show what should be obvious and yet needs to be said anyway: that these are men with families, friends and careers they care about, and that not every Arab is a dangerous religious zealot.

The Kingdom is produced by Michael Mann, but Berg’s style is far less stylistic than Mann’s. He prefers a grittier, more chaotic method of filmmaking, and though handheld cameras seem to be the action-movie rule these days, they’re used skillfully here to deliver an almost unbearable adrenaline rush, replicating the agents’ desperation, fear and quick thinking under duress.

Many viewers, lulled by the easy, jingoistic excitement of 24, will expect, and perhaps demand, a flag-waving finale, but any relieved applause will be short-lived. The Kingdom wants to thrill you and leave you wrung out, and it does. But with a visceral and vital jolt, the film also aims to make you question the effectiveness of revenge and understand there are no easy remedies for what well may be an increasingly impossible situation.

Cast: Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Ashraf Barhom, Ali Suliman.

Director: Peter Berg.

Screenwriter: Matthew Michael Carnahan.

Producers: Peter Berg, Michael Mann, Scott Stuber.

A Universal Pictures release. release. Running time: 110 minutes. Intense sequences of brutal, graphic violence, language. Playing at area theaters.

This story was originally published October 26, 2007 at 7:10 AM.