Posted on 09/28/2007 1:53:08 PM PDT by LS
Edited on 09/28/2007 2:36:32 PM PDT by Lead Moderator. [history]
This action/thriller could have devolved into a giant PC "can't-we-all-get-along" tolerance-fest. Fortunately, except for a line at the end (no, I won't spoil it), it does not. It brings home the lack of freedom present in Saudi Arabia, combined with the best in suspense and action. Although Jamie Foxx is clearly the star, the ensemble that includes Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and Ashraf Barhoum keeps the focus on solving the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound, not on personalities.
Directed by Peter Berg ("The Rundown," "Very Bad things"), the story follows four FBI agents who desperately want to go to Saudi Arabia to find out who killed 100 Americans, including one of their colleagues. Through subtle blackmail, Foxx (Special Agent Ronald Fleury) convinces the Saudi ambassador to "insist" on obtaining the FBI's help---despite the fact the politicians in Washington want to leave it in the hands of the Saudis. Fleury's team arrive on what is essentially Mars: they cannot have firearms, passports, cannot touch evidence, cannot even poke around at the "crime" scene; they may not touch dead Muslims at all; and the Saudi men nearly have a heart attack when Garner (Special Agent Janet Mayes) steps off the plane in a tight t-shirt. They face further obstructions in the form of the local U.S. representative, Damon Schmidt (played ever so smarmily by Jeremy Piven). And they are given only five days to solve the "crime," although the line between terrorists and criminals is appropriately blurred.
The bombing scene is horrific: a compound baseball game is interrupted by literally a "drive-by" shooting (no, not the U.S. media---the other terrorists). But that's a diversion for the suicide bomber, who takes out a good 20 people. . . . but he's just a diversion for the truck bomber, who kills over 100 in a gruesome explosion. Director Berg does not go overboard, but he does show enough to get the revenge juices flowing.
Colonel Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhoum), a Saudi military policeman, is the only competent Saudi on the scene, but he's subordinate to his blunt-force Army general. Fleury pockets enough evidence that he convinces Al Ghazi to let the team work; and in turn, through a meeting with Prince Khaled, Al Ghazi and Fleury gain enough clout to seriously investigate.
Trailers say don't miss the last 30 minutes. That's because the terrorists decide to take out the agents, first through the old car-bomb trick, then by snatching one of them (Adam Leavitt, played by Jason Bateman) from the explosion scene so they can behead him in front of the camera.
Neither Al Ghazi nor Fleury's team will allow that to happen, tracking the terrorists in a high-speed chase to their lair in an apartment building, where Mayes (naturally, the female always manages to separate herself from the rest of the group) stumbles upon a tied-up and gagged Leavitt and blasts away at the bad guys. The outcome of this battle within a battle even elicited cheers from our small audience in mid-afternoon, and other reviewers say audiences everywhere erupt in cheers over the conclusion of this scene.
While there is something of an obligatory "violence begets violence" line at the end, it's a throwaway. The audiences know what has happened: the Americans and their decent ally have kicked terrorist butt. A number of scenes, however, subtly show how immense the task ahead of us is, because for every Al Ghazi we see in the movie, there are at least three bomb-makers, all missing a couple of fingers. On many levels, this movie depicts the larger struggle behind the War on Terror, namely the fight for liberty over an oppresive religous world-view.
BY THE WAY, ALL, HEADS UP: I forgot to mention a preview of a movie (forget the title) about an Arab American who is “unjustly” nabbed by our security at an airport and whisked off to Egypt or some other friendly country for “questioning.” It’s all about the evil Patriot Act/War on Terror/Club Gitmo!
Just looking at the excerpts from the reviews, they all seem to bemoan the fact the movie doesn’t take a absurdly ‘nuanced’ (read: anti-American or relativist) viewpoint and has clearly identifiable ‘bad guys’ as if we have to sit there and wonder who between the honorable AMerican and the nihilist Islamist bomber is the good guy.
These people really are a piece of work. You can really tell the reviewers who were bothered by something too pro-American.
I agree. Both he and Will Smith are super-star quality, but Smith usually can do it with any script, and Foxx, as you say, needs help.
Don’t trust me, either. See the movie.
I’m definitely going to see this one!
I don’t see in any way how one comes out of this sympathetic to the “House of Saud.” Maybe to a few individual Saudis.
The one scene where Jennifer Garner (ahem!) “introduces” the terrorist’s “glory” to the end of her knife make it worth it.
Thanks for clarifying. Actually we have never taken our 15 year old to an “R” rated movie before.
I thought this might be a good way to expose her to the Islamofaciast threat?
You forgot Collateral, He was good in that also./Just Asking - seoul62........
Oooops, the 15 year old stays home.....
The Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel (liberal rag) actually bothered to review Tom Clancy’s book “Without Remorse” when it came out.
The only problem was that the reviewer, NEVER BOTHERED TO READ THE BOOK!
The reviewer missed the fact that “Without Remorse” did -not- feature Clancy’s ubiquitous Jack Ryan. Rather it featured Ryan’s “go to guy” John Kelly (Code Name: Mr. Clark).
I talked to the reviewer’s editor and even he didn’t seem too bothered by his employee’s laziness.
Lazy liberals......
Also thought Jamie Fox was pretty great in “Bait” where they planted that tracking device in him to catch the genius who stole millions in gold, buried in the ‘Bronx Zoo.’
It has to do with how most countries, America and Saudi included, don’t give a rats ass about problems that aren’t their own. And anybody expecting the Saudis to give a damn about America’s terrorism problem whenever it isn’t also their terrorism problem might as well expect water to run uphill. We spent most of the 70s ignoring other people’s terrorism problems because they weren’t OUR terrorism problem, now it’s the 00s and nobody has any right to be surprised or annoyed at other countries not paying attention to our problem.
His review is here.
Didn’r say it does. The House of Saud is the crux of our problem in the MidEast. One whole side of the House of Bush is in its pocket and so is the House of Clinton. No doubt in my mind, and this is of course speculation, that the Administration knows that Al Qaeda could not have sustained itself in Iraq except that the Saudis want it so.
Don’t see it this way. I think that Saudi Arabia is a cheap sponsor of terrorism. Without its money, the insurgency in Iraq would have creased three years ago.
I’m sure some in Saudi are. Of course we’ve also found organizations right here that are giving the bad guys money. Doesn’t mean there aren’t some people in both countries that want them stopped. Remember a couple of years ago a couple of bombs went off in Saudi, I’m sure they lost a few allies that day.
The government has done nothing significant to halt the flow of money from “private” sources” in Saudi Arabia.
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