Cynical Cinema

Watching The Kingdom confirmed a few suspicions for me. I have always suspected that everyone the United States trains for any kind of gun-related activity has the capacity to be Rambo. (The CIA, the FBI, the military, mall security guards.) No, more than that, my suspicion has been that not only are they all trained to be Rambo should the need arise, but also that they are all waiting. Just waiting for a chance to break out the headband and the M-16 and take out all their enemies in a hail of gunfire. I have also suspected that the FBI was the only agency in the U.S. with balls, and that they are held back from doing the real work by namby-pamby pansies in the upper echelons of government. No, more than that, I have always thought that were they given the chance, rather than being blocked at every turn, the FBI could have just shown up in Afghanistan and caught Osama Bin Laden within a week.

And now, here comes The Kingdom, to not only confirm my suspicions, but to hammer me over the head with these incontrovertable facts. Which is not to say The Kingdom is a bad movie. It isn’t. But it’s not a good one either. The thing is, it’s two different movies. It starts out as smart as Syriana, and ends as dumb as well…Rambo. The beginning of the film makes you think you’re in for an intense, political, smart movie about terrorism and the relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It opens with a bang, so to speak, as a suicide bomb attack blows up an American softball game in Saudi Arabia. This is truly shocking, with men, women and children all being slaughtered. It’s an upsetting scene and a reminder of what terrorism is the world over. Also shocking and captivating is the subsequent torture scene, where the Suadi guard who saved the day by killing the terrorists gets interrogated by his own army. He shot the terrorists, and therefore they could not be questioned. Maybe he is in league with them - making sure they are dead so they can’t talk. It is very effective, and promises an interesting subplot. Since American citizens (and one FBI guy) were killed over there, the FBI wants to send a small team of elite agents into Saudi Arabia to investigate the crime.

This takes place in movie world, where the people who are going to be sent in like elite FBI commandos are the same people who make their case during top-level government discussions. Either they are extremely high-ranking FBI officials who still somehow see active firefight duty, or they are elite commando FBI operatives who somehow have access to the brass at the Pentagon and the White House. Either way, it doesn’t matter, it’s a movie. So Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman and the bizarrely cast Jennifer Garner show up in Saudi Arabia. There is a power struggle going on with the colonel in charge of the barracks that were attacked, the general of the Saudi Army who has assumed control over the investigation, and the newly arrived Americans. This could be interesting also. But it does not last long. Quickly, Jamie Foxx is able to convince the Saudi royal family that the colonel is the man for the job, and that they should be given access to the whole city.

From then on, all subplots are abandoned. That guy who was unjustly tortured? He comes along for the ride. He drives. The power struggle between the general and the colonel? The general just disappears. Now it’s just American commando rah-rah guns blazing through Riyadh. All four Americans are Rambo, especially Jennifer Garner, who rescues Jason Bateman from a particularly unpleasant fate in a very commando sort of way. Picture Jennifer Garner, the chick from Alias, cauterizing her wound by lighting gunpowder and then mowing down half of Afghanistan, a la Rambo 3. Are you smiling? Yeah, you should be. It’s asinine. So these Americans have been in Riyadh for five days. And they have solved the crime, located the terrorist cell responsible, and killed everyone involved. And America can’t find Osama? Geez. I hope they do, because capturing him would obviously involve car chases, rocket launchers, snipers, machine guns, machetes and would make for terrific TV.

The main problem with The Kingdom is that the cartoonish last half completely devalues the otherwise excellent buildup in the first half. The movie promises so much more than it delivers. A better movie of this nature is Collateral Damage, with Arnold Schwarzennegger. Now, I know what you’re saying. Really? You’re saying. But Collateral Damage was by no means a classic. In fact, I found it awful, you say. That is fine. But at least it delivered exactly what it promised. Terrorists blew up a family. The father of that family went after the terrorists. There was lots of action. The terrorists died. In the Kingdom, we think we are going to get something so much smarter and so much more interesting than Collateral Damage, that when all we get IS Collateral Damage, it’s that much more of a disappointment. It’s worth renting just for that first half, but prepare for disappointment in the second.