After a bomb rips apart a guarded American settlement inside Saudi Arabia, the FBI sends an elite terrorism investigative unit led by Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) to assist in the search for suspects. Monitoring their every step in Riyadh is Saudi Colonel Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom). He’s under strict orders to keep the agents impact on the investigation to an absolute minimum, a fact which frustrates him nearly as much as the Americans. 

Jamie Foxx takes command in Universal Pictures' The Kingdom

But even if none of them can come to an agreement in regards to the politics, what they do agree on is that the killers responsible for this atrocity must be brought to justice. Al Ghazi begins to subtly give Fleury pointers on how to get his point across the Saudi Prince in charge of handling the affair, while in turn the FBI man does what he can to keep his team, including cantankerous explosive expert Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper) and brilliant hands-on forensic examiner Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), from doing anything which could rile up the locals.

Everything looks promising until the terrorists decide to directly target Fleury and his entire team for elimination. When one of their agents, acerbic intelligence analyst Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman), is taken hostage everyone must find a way to work together under the direst of circumstances. Action must be taken swiftly if a rescue is going to occur, both American and Saudi lifting arms together to stop another murder from taking place upon the latter’s soil.

For all that Peter Berg’s (Friday Night Lights) latest opus has on its mind, it’s hard not to get past the fact The Kingdom is really nothing more than a feature length episode of C.S.I. transported to the politically unstable confines of the Middle East. More, while the questions writer Matthew Michael Carnahan (the forthcoming Lions for Lambs) proposes are complicated and without easy answers, the ones it ultimately comes up with are rather simplistic as well as drowned out by the deafening sound of machine gun fire. There is a huge part of me that wanted more from all of this then both Berg and Carnahan were willing to give me, the fact of which unsettles me far more then I’d really rather admit.

Why? Because despite these significant problems The Kingdom is a fantastically entertaining thriller I can’t wait to see again. The film builds tension beautifully, the investigation a meticulous process full of nifty twists and turns gloriously fleshed out to near perfection in Carnahan’s solid script. Berg directs with a masterful eye for nuance and detail, unleashing a furious finale of automatic weapons, crashing cars and exploding rockets that’s as tense and terrific as anything else similar I’ve seen this year.

Granted, this while twenty or so minute passage can’t help but feel lifted almost wholesale from Philip Noyce’s Clear and Present Danger but so what? Other than The Bourne Ultimatum there has not been an action film this year that has offered up such a giddily glorious combination of smarts, mayhem and excitement the likes of which Berg produces here. The Kingdom is one of those pictures that remembers sending an audience out happy is the best remedy there is to camouflage a few missteps, and by the time the suitably ambiguous trip home commences it’s extremely hard to imagine audiences feeling remotely unhappy about what it is they’ve just experienced.

Still, it’s hard for me to let go of the things that don’t work here. Garner’s character is a bit of a mess (and not at all believable), while Bateman (as endearingly sarcastic as he is) seems to be in a different movie then everyone else. Most egregious is the casting of Jeremy Piven in the pivotal role of American diplomat Damon Schmidt. He plays the guy just like he does Ari Gold on Entourage and for the life me I can’t ever imagine a guy as manic and as in your face as that would ever make for a successful ambassador. 

Yet this film does work, sometimes beautifully. It is a tense exercise of pulsating excitement building to a climax that fills the theater with its spectacularly invigorating carnage. While I wish Berg and Carnahan would have dove a bit deeper, for all they don’t accomplish what they do deliver is still worthy of rousing applause. The Kingdom might not be perfect, but it is entertaining, which, at least in this case, is more than enough for the film to get the royal treatment (and a recommendation) from me.

Film Rating:  êêê  (out of 4)

Additonal Links

-  The Kingdom Theatrical Trailer