The Kingdom Review

Don't be fooled by "The Kingdom"s Middle Eastern setting and its (partly) Oscar-winning cast — at its core, this really is an American, kick-ass action movie. And that's fine by me.

Still, that doesn't stop director Peter Berg from at least attempting to dress up his film in prestige drama clothes. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he doesn't.

After a creative and impressive opening credits sequence summarizing U.S./Saudi relations, the film opens with a bang as an American compound in Saudi Arabia is attacked. Meanwhile, after some mild political maneuvering, an elite FBI team led by Jamie Foxx's Agent Ron Fleury is given five days to find the killers in Saudi Arabia.

The team consists of Jennifer Garner as a forensic expert doing a considerably less interesting variation on her tough chick persona from "Alias." There's also Chris Cooper as a seasoned good ol' boy bomb technician who could be annoying, if he weren't played by Chris Cooper, who makes everything he's in better. Finally, there's "Arrested Development"s Jason Bateman as the computer techie/obligatory wiseass whose wisecracks probably sounded more amusing than they were because I love Jason Bateman so much.

Meanwhile, as I watched this movie, I realized that Jamie Foxx is basically playing every role that Denzel Washington would've played 15 years ago (and I'm ok with that). Here, he's pretty solid as he exudes genuine authority to balance his streetwise charm/humor. He's equally effective in his dramatic scenes as he is in the action scenes.

On the other hand, it seems that Jeremy Piven has decided to only play Ari Gold from now on. He's supposed to be a US/Saudi ambassador in this movie, but it's definitely his character from Entourage — with grayish hair and glasses.

The real find in the cast is Ashraf Barhom, as a Saudi Colonel who wants to find the perpetrators as badly as the Americans do. This character is clearly Berg's attempt at a simplistic "not all Saudis are evil" message, but the director sorta cancels any of that out with multiple flashy shots of "sinister" Saudis whenever the FBI team ventures away from the compound when they're conducting their investigation.

Still, Barhoom injects his role with a lot of humanity and some humor that probably wasn't there and it IS nice to see such a positive portrayal of a Saudi in a mainstream American movie because, unfortunately, a lot of people probably DO think all Saudis are evil.

Thought the much of the movie plays out effectively like a murder mystery, the last 30 minutes are where the director really seems to be enjoying himself. It's basically one long (impressive) action sequence, but to me it kind of undermined all the quiet moments between the team and the growing respect between Foxx and Bahroom's characters.

It wasn't so much that there was action at the end (that was necessary), but it was the kind of action where the good guys rarely miss, the bad guys have terrible aim and the good guys never have to reload. It really was no different than something Schwarzennegger (in "Commando") would've made in the late 80s.

This movie was too good for such a dopey conclusion. Still, it's a very entertaining way to pass nearly two hours and there are more than enough likable actors (in addition to the main cast, Kyle Chandler! Richard Jenkins!) giving decent-to-good performances to make it all worthwhile.

The Kingdom...B