The Kingdom.

"The Kingdom, about terror against Americans in Saudi Arabia, will confirm some of the worst American prejudices about the Middle East - that most Arabs there hate the US, and that America could eliminate threats there if bureaucrats got out of the way and if a few good men (and a woman) went in with the gloves off and guns ablaze," writes David D'Arcy for Screen Daily. "You can guess who comes out on top in this action movie."

"America, fuck yeah, knows how to bring the thunder to terrorists," growls Nick Schager at Slant. "All you have to do is send over a quartet of FBI agents, give 'em five days to smooth out relations with the po-po and a richy rich prince, and ka-boom, ka-blam, ka-pow, national security reestablished!"

Updated through 9/27.

"If you're a filmmaker planning to juice up an FBI thriller by setting it in the contemporary Middle East and using visceral, highly charged images of suicide bombings and violent religious fundamentalism to drive the story, you'd best be on top of your game, brother," advises Bryant Frazer. "There is an interesting political story to be told here - and, to be fair, the graphic précis of recent events in the oil-rich Saudi Kingdom that opens the film, covering everything from the discovery of oil in the 1930s to the 2001 attacks by al Qaeda under the leadership of Osama Bin Laden, is almost scarily effective - but the screenplay by Matthew Michael Carnahan is little more than a blueprint for a spin-off TV series: CSI Saudi Arabia."

"The issue is whether trained investigators - contending with rogue elements that represent no sovereign nation - would be more effective than full-scale military action in terms of nailing an Osama bin Laden-style evildoer," writes John Anderson in Variety. "Where pic goes astray is inturning anonymous, indigenous peoples into ducks at a shooting gallery. In Black Hawk Down, the alleged good guys mowed down hundreds of faceless Africans; here, it's Arabs, in what seem like comparable numbers. The sense of vicarious sport is the same; anyone in a caftan or a kepi is fair game."

David Walters talks with director Peter Berg for Esquire.

Earlier: John Horn's backgrounder for the Los Angeles Times.

Updates, 9/23: Newsweek's David Ansen suspects that "Berg and screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan don't know what kind of movie they've actually made - or would like to pretend they've made another kind."

For the Los Angeles Times, Rachel Abramowitz talks with Ashraf Barhom, "one of a wave of talented actors from the Middle East and South Asia getting a break from Hollywood's newfound interest in geopolitics. With movies such as Syriana, Munich, United 93 and A Mighty Heart as well as the upcoming Rendition, actors such as Ifran Khan, Omar Metwally and Igal Naor have landed some of the most complicated, fraught male roles of the year."

Updates, 9/24: "The trouble with Berg's film is not hard to pin down," writes Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. "Since he made a sour little black comedy called Very Bad Things, in 1998, he has become adept at the marshalling of multiple figures, and the boom and stutter of the action sequences in the new film - whether on the freeway or in the claustrophobic back alleys of Riyadh - leaves you thoroughly winded and wiped. Even in the midst of that response, however, you realize that what whips up the melee is vengefulness. This is not to be confused with justice; the film has nothing but contempt for the traditional methods of diplomacy and international law, and the true villains of the piece are not the terrorists, whose patient bombmaking we watch in horrified detail, but Schmidt, the sweating wimp from the State Department, who is nauseated by the sight of blood, and, even more heinous, the US Attorney General (Danny Huston), with his quibbling reluctance to unleash the FBI on foreign soil."

David Edelstein in New York: "[Chris] Cooper has become a master at staying in the background yet upstaging everyone, and [Jennifer] Garner is the ne plus ultra of action heroines: Those pillowy lips say at once 'Kiss me' and 'Kiss my ass.'"

Update, 9/25: "Halfway through the movie, the FBI agents go Marine," writes J Hoberman in the Voice. "United in vengeance, the combined American and Saudi forces eventually eschew dull procedure for thrilling car-chase action, ending with a firefight in a very bad neighborhood. (Call it 'Black Hawk downtown.') A hand-to-hand slamming-gouging-stabbing denouement got a mild rise out of the preview audience at the Loews 83rd Street, but the movie's main satisfaction is the utopian spectacle of wounded Americans heading home, mission accomplished."

Update, 9/26: "One critic's oversimplified drama is another's thriller with a touch of class," suggests Jesse Hassenger in the L Magazine.

Updates, 9/27: "There have been enough Middle East / Iraq War-based movies trickling out in 2007 to comprise a film school mini-symposium on what will surely prove to be the most ubiquitous topic and setting over the next decade," writes Neil Morris in the Independent Weekly. "Surprisingly, the best of this year's lot thus far is The Kingdom, an action movie with characters filled by Hollywood central casting."

"Out of context, the latter half of the movie would look like a propaganda film for the war on terror," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "In context, however, it adds nothing to the ideas about jumbled international cooperation introduced in the first act."

"If The Kingdom were satisfied with being a crackling action movie and police procedural about federal agents trying to find the culprits behind a bombing in Saudi Arabia, it would offer an entertaining night at the movie with overtones of current events," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC. "But this latest film from director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) has bigger terrorists to fry, and it fails in its attempt to be a serious drama with important things to say about the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East."

Ella Taylor profiles Ashraf Barhom for the LA Weekly.

Posted by dwhudson at September 21, 2007 8:19 AM