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!
Movie stars critics, is there anything they don't know?!!
Ebert has been unhinged since Gene Siskel died. He has no shame anymore and Dopey Roeper only encourages him.
Global Wahabism is the Saudi’s problem. They took care of THEIR problem with it by exporting it. They fund international Wahabism to stem the Wahabi attacks in Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis depend on us to protect them from their own internal agents that they pay off.
European governments have also been caught paying off terrorists to get hostages released.
And such as it was in the time of Thomas Jefferson.
This game cannot continue. The world must stand up and stomp it out.
I wonder if the book would not be better. It usually is.
It would be. A better way, though, without some of the issues I raised is the DVD “Obsession.” I also think “Flight 93” does a pretty good job. And there is a terrific Brit movie called “Dirty War” about a Muslim terrorist group that ignites a dirty bomb in London. VERY realistic, in terms of the damage, the response, and the motives.
I liked that movie.
One of the things that we as westerners MUST start to “get” is that these people LIVE their religion, as opposed to “practice” a few times a day. I’m reading Dinesh D’Souza’s “The Enemy At Home.” While I strongly disagree with his view that “we brought 9/11 on ourselves,” which, despite his many denials, comes through pretty strongly, he does provide a powerful insight into the view by radicalized Muslims that they see all of western culture as a threat to all of Islam. The sex, depravity, destruction of women’s roles and the family are all very real issues to them. Some of that comes through in “The Kingdom,” and the unanswered question is, how do those Muslims who want to “reform” or “modernize” Islam do so?
Doo-dooo-dooo-dooo. Que Twilight Zone theme. Don tinfoil hats.
You didn’t know whether to cry or to jump up and scream “M-—fers!” Right?
If there is a book, “The Kingdom,” it can’t possibly match the intensity of both the opening bomb scenes and the last 30 minutes.
Yah, it’s blatant. There is a line where the National Security Director is consoling the guy who arrested this “peaceful” Arab-American, saying, “we got information that saved 7,000 lives yesterday in London. You did well.” Of course, the audience is meant to go, “NO! NO WE DIDN’T. LET ‘EM DIE SO THAT WE DON’T VIOLATE HIS CIVIL RIGHTS!”
Which while true has zero relationship to my original discussion on this thread. The statement I was objecting to was that no one in Saudi cares about terrorism in a way that would help America, mathematically that’s pretty darn unlikely, there’s a lot of people in the country, at least one or two of them must like America or at least not like terrorists. And any condemnation of Saudi for a general lack of concern on the subject needs to recall our own general lack of concern on the same subject until 6 years ago.
The world is not going to rise up to stomp out a religious sect. It’s just not how things go anymore. Part of the problem with being civilized is deciding genocide is a bad thing. We’ll just have to find a way to ride it out. Eventually nut burger movements tend to burn themselves out, mostly because they have a complete inability to rule, the Wahabis and the similar nutty subsections of Islam can’t run a country. This has been proven in Palestine and other places, they’re just too driven by blood and not interested enough in the boring parts of being in charge like keeping the utilities going and fostering business relations. This will keep them from ever truly winning, if you can’t run a little bitty semi-country like Palestine you can’t rule the world. The only real question is how long will it take them to peter out and how annoying will they be until then. But nobody is going to repeat the destruction of the Catharists, even if we should it’s not going to happen.
He’s a bit better now that he doesn’t do the TV show and just writes his reviews away from Roeper. But yeah it’s a shame he didn’t hire another good film critic who would challenge him instead of a populist hack like Roeper.
That was my reaction when they were meeting with the US State Department weenies who were trying to keep the FBI team from going to Saudi.
got a hell yeah from the audience here in Dallas......
Yes. And they made the person who “saved” the 7,000 look horrible because the info was extracted with torture. It’s an anti-U.S., anti-military movie for sure, just like the Tommie Lee Jones movie that is out now, “In the Valley of . . . something or other”.
I was reading the reviews on Yahoo, and the more I read the more it sounded like this might be a good movie. The Boston Globe, and others like it all hated it, which of course made me suspect that it might actually be good. So... I came here to see what the rational people are saying, and now I think I’ll go catch the 4:00 showing.
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