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The Kingdom
Movie Stats & Links |
| Starring: |
Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner,
Jason Bateman, Chris Cooper, Ashraf Barhom |
| MPAA Rated: |
R |
| Released By: |
Universal Pictures |
| Web Site: |
www.thekingdommovie.com |
| Kiddie Movie: |
Leave them at
home. |
| Date Movie: |
It's okay for the
both of you. |
| Gratuitous Sex: |
Jennifer Garner
wears some tight t-shirts which is about it. |
| Gratuitous
Violence: |
Lots of gunfire,
people getting killed, and a suicide bombing with lots of
dead bodies. |
| Action: |
At the end. |
| Laughs: |
Not really. |
| Memorable
Scene: |
The giving of the
marble. |
| Memorable
Quote: |
I can't remember
what it was. Guess it wasn't that memorable then, but
I remember it made me laugh. |
| Directed By: |
Peter Berg |
| Produced By: |
Michael Mann, Scott Stuber |
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The Kingdom
A Movie Review |
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Funny, from the trailer for "The Kingdom" you would have
thought the movie would be a non-stop, action-packed
thriller about some FBI dudes (and dudette) investigating a
bombing in Saudi Arabia. If that’s the movie you are looking
for you might want to skip the first hour and a half of this
movie and just catch the ending. Here we go…
There’s a big suicide bombing at a compound for the
families of an oil company in Saudi Arabia. The FBI wants to
send a team to investigate, but with international politics
and dumb-ass politicians, well, it looks like the FBI’s
hands are tied. But one of the people killed in the bombing
was one of the FBI’s own, and a good friend of Agent Fleury
(Jamie Foxx), and so Fleury figures out a back-door way to
get his investigative team into Saudi Arabia, the team that
includes Chris Cooper as Grant, Jennifer Garner as Janet,
and Jason Bateman as Adam. But the swagger of the FBI is met
with heavy opposition, as well as heavy restrictions on
anything they can do, by the Saudi’s, although Colonel Faris
with Saudi Arabia
(Ashraf Barhom) begins to realize that to really get the job
of finding the bad guys, well, the FBI folks might actually be the
ones to solve the bombing.
So with lots of posturing and some innovative
negotiations by Fleury with the Saudi Prince, now our boys
(and girl) are given a little bit more free reign to help
the Saudi folks find the bombers, but little do they know
that they are also being targeted.
And so, for the first hour and a half we get a lot of
"you can’t do this," "you can’t do that," "you can’t go
here," "you can’t go there," and some covering up of Jennifer
Garner’s boobs. We get people making alliances, people
realizing they are actually on the same side, and crooked
politicians in Washington trying to muck things up. A lot of
plot development is done, a lot of people interaction is
done, but for the most part none of it is a surprise. Then
the bad guys kidnap Adam in the police convoy and the race
is on to find him, which actually leads to the headquarters
of the bad guys, and a gun battle ensues with some of the worst
shooting bad dudes ever.
All in all "The Kingdom" isn’t that bad. The acting is
pretty solid on all sides, the action scene at the end is
great, but I found two things wrong with the film. One was
it took way too long to set things up. Yes, we get the point
that at first the Saudi’s don’t want our help, we get the
transition to letting us help, and we understand that not
all Muslims are bad. Second was way too much use of shaky
camera movements to make things, hell I don’t know, look
shaky. Who has told some of these directors that I want an
upset stomach when I watch a movie?
The movie isn’t too political, only what you might
expect, but there was a scene at the ending seemingly trying
to say that the actions of our FBI team wasn’t any different
from the beliefs of the suicide bombers.
You can probably wait for a rental on "The Kingdom." The
action scenes are great at the end, but you might want to
have your bathroom nearby in case your tummy gets queezy
with the camera movement. It’s 3 stars out of 5.
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!!
L8R!!! |
