Over at MTV, Kurt Loder reviews ‘The Kingdom‘, a political-action thriller by Peter Berg. The film stars Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner and is about a FBI team investigating terrorist attacks in a Saudi Arabia that isn’t too welcoming.
Expect political and Middle Eastern stereotypes to abound in a film that’s inspired by two actual terrorist incidents. A recent parallel would be Syriana (2005), a film which examines the politics of the oil industry within the Middle East.
The movie is oddly uninvolving — it doesn’t seem connected to the real world, especially the phenomenon of Islamist terrorism with which we’re all dismally familiar. The film’s political point of view is irritatingly vague. It repeatedly demonstrates for us that American and Arab parents love their children equally (presumably even those who strap their kids with bomb belts before sending them off to the town square), and it boldly suggests that we should therefore all try a little bit harder to get along. (link)
Judging from the trailer, The Kingdom seems to pack in a lot more of the usual action and firepower:
