Just over six years have passed since Sept. 11, 2001. Everyone, no matter their political beliefs, agrees that we as Americans were fundamentally changed that day. Our brightest thinkers have grappled with the resultant paradigm shift. The president has tried, too. Yet despite many valiant efforts, no one to date has managed to make a good post-Sept. 11 movie.
The latest attempt, “The Kingdom,” is an impeccably crafted film that delivers on every count except that of making artistic sense of the war on terror. Featuring CNN-esque cinematography and hard-bitten performances, it conveys the shocking human cost of terrorism with single-minded seriousness. “The Kingdom” would have you believe that its images and emotions are as real as film can bring you.
However, “The Kingdom” shines not as an emotional exploration but as a demanding action thriller. The last 30 minutes will take your breath away. By the time the credits scroll, you may have to physically pry your fingers from the armrests. The explosive, climactic action scenes are nothing short of astonishing.
Unfortunately, the filmmakers want to make your head hurt as well as your gut. This is one fine thriller, but it isn’t nearly as insightful as it thinks it is. The plot follows an elite team of FBI agents (Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) as they investigate a terrorist bombing of an American compound in Saudi Arabia. Soon, they realize that they too are targets in an alien landscape where friends and foes dress alike.
“The Kingdom” announces its lofty aspirations up front with a slickly produced five-minute primer on the complete history of Saudi Arabia, the titular kingdom, that manages to pack more information per minute than anything produced by the news networks on the subject. Saudi Arabia itself, and by extension its people, is meant to be a character every bit as human and complex as any of the FBI agents.
These estimable aims are undone by the film’s unconscious reliance on jingoism and stereotypy – in other words, “The Kingdom” is this year’s “Crash.” Each of the Americans, with the possible exception of Jamie Foxx’s character, is more fully drawn than any of the Saudis. The honorable policeman, the progressive but proud prince and the inflexible colonel each make appearances. Regardless of the amount of screentime devoted to the policeman in particular, their fates are never more than momentarily affecting.
The politics of “The Kingdom” are even murkier. It is deservedly without sympathy for the terrorists who murder families at a ball field, but in making the FBI team overcome bureaucratic obstacles in order to pursue their investigation, it suggests America is not putting forth sufficient effort in the war on terror, and in making them such efficient investigators, it suggests if we only tried we could have the rats’ nests cleared by Christmas. It sees the royal family as both ally and obstacle, and it trusts the Saudi people, but only the good ones.
The artistic goals of the film are only partially salvaged by the coda. A single line of dialogue is meant to compensate for the moral simplicity of the previous two hours, and while it prompts a reassessment of everything that came before, when all is over the new idea is no less superficial than what it replaces.
“The Kingdom” is far from a bad movie, but it demands to be judged as an intellectual statement, and on that score it misses its mark. While its message is not as show-stopping as it intends, the film at least begs you to wonder why it comes up short, which may in the end be a more interesting question.
