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'The Kingdom'

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

September 28, 2007

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Like children and neo-conservatives, a good war action thriller wants the face of evil to be unambiguous and clearly defined. If we're not seeing a lot of these films set in Iraq at the moment, it may be because it's a little problematic sorting out the good guys from the bad. The war in Iraq is also too much of a hot potato to stir a strong consensus at the box office: A dramatized Iraq thriller with something for everyone would either be spineless, tasteless or all of the above.

"The Kingdom" does its level best to be something for everyone, or at least every red-blooded American. Rather than mess around with Iraq, it points its compass to that neglected hotbed of anti-American resentment, Saudi Arabia, where it whips up a frenzy of terrorist mayhem that enables us to project all our rage and frustration at a war without end.

"The Kingdom" opens with a dual reminder that the U.S. is the biggest oil consumer in the world and that the largest contingent of Sept. 11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia. These confusing but not incompatible factoids set the stage for the double bombing of an American oil company staff picnic in Riyadh, which takes the lives of hundreds of employees, family members and first responders.

FBI agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), a specialist in terrorist activity, has a personal stake in finding those responsible: He lost a close colleague in the bombing, one who has an adorable small son about the same age as his own. Children and family up the stakes in "The Kingdom," as if the stakes of Arab-American tensions needed upping. Most of us would bend rules and fly through hoops to protect our own - an athletic feat that will be soon demanded of Fleury and his select team, Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper), Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner) and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman).

For Fleury and company, the hoops are on both sides of the ocean: a U.S. State Department reluctant to have an aggressive FBI investigation soil its delicate trade alliance with Saudi royalty and a Saudi military establishment loath to be bossed around by Americans. That proud local faction is embodied in Colonel Faris (the compelling Ashraf Barhorn), who also happens to have a sweet, young son with large, inquisitive eyes.

Faris stonewalls the investigation until he comes to realize that they are all working toward the same goal. Before Faris has his epiphany, he and his cronies are portrayed as bull-headed louts who torture suspects to wring confessions and are incompetent at crime solving.

After years of strategical miscalculations in Iraq, "The Kingdom" reassures us that America still has the upper hand when it comes to military procedural know-how and moral clarity. The film's patronizing undercurrent of American sophistication vs. Saudi bumbling extends to its portrait of Faris, who, in a bonding moment with the irritatingly paternalistic Fleury, emerges as a warm puppy dog with an abiding affection for American comic book heroes. He refers to the Hulk as "the green beast." The darling.

Screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan wants us to know that there are good Arabs and bad Arabs, but he panders to our basest 9/11 anxieties, exploiting our collective horror at the fate of journalist Daniel Pearl and the smoldering potential of aging, radical Muslim clerics. Director Peter Berg deploys a darting, docu-style camera to work the audience into a lather of retribution fever. "The Kingdom" ends as it begins, on a tableau of the great American father extending a benevolent arm to the children of the world.

THE KINGDOM (R). A terrorist bombing on a U.S. oil base in Saudi Arabia launches FBI agent Jamie Foxx on a mission to flex American muscle and whup some Arabs. Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman comprise his crack team, who have their hands full trying to break through local resistance and get the job done. As clamorous and patronizing as it sounds. 1:40 (intense sequences of graphic, brutal violence, and language). At area theaters.

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