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10/10/2007 THE KINGDOM A brave movie in the current political climate, The Kingdom examines the fragile relationship between west and east in the form of a thriller built around a terrorist bomb attack on westerners living in Saudi Arabia. There was such an attack in Riyadh in 2003, so Peter Berg’s film is even more sensitive, especially as his film focuses on the local hostilities aroused when the FBI steam into Saudi to try and smoke out the perpetrators. Cue lots of explosions, dramatic rescues, shouty bits and rising tensions when Jamie Foxx as the FBI’s mainman, does his stuff. Loads of stuff for all you action fans to get your teeth into and plenty of food for thought, too, even if does rather clumsily re-assert old movie myths about heroic Americans and untrustworthy foreigners. Not too much babe action, I’m afraid buys, apart from Jennifer Garner, who isn’t exactly dressed to kill (well, actually she is dressed to kill but not in the way you mean) as FBI medic Janet Mayes. I do know you boys love a gal who knows how to mop your brow and Jen won’t disappoint. It’s not quite as simple, though, as the American good guys flying in to catch the baddies – and the Muslim colonel in charge of the local end of the investigation also turns out to be a goodie who forms a bond with the FBI crowd. And the search for the Osama-type character identified as the bomber is genuinely intriguing as the clues are unravelled in the hunt to track him down and the FBI themselves come under threat from the militants. There’s an element of humour to in a movie that has much more to it than meets the eye and after seeing this film I ended up sharing supper with my latest boyband member boyfriend ignoring his vacuous babble as I pondered the questions raised by the film and the fascinating study it made of the history of US-Saudi relations. Not to everyone’s taste and maybe it does try too hard to cover so many angles, but it’s an above average thriller. |
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