Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Review: The Kingdom (Grade: D-)

Say what you want, but Arizona DOES NOT look like Saudia Arabia. Okay, now that I have that out of the way let me talk about Peter Berg's new film, "The Kingdom."

First off, Peter Berg was the wrong guy to direct this film. Why? Berg directed the critical and commercial successful film "Friday Night Lights", which even spawned a TV show, but the visual style that worked for that film does not work here. I'm not a big fan of Cinema Verite, you know, the extremely shaky handheld style that's all the rage now. It works in a football movie. It doesn't work here. There is only one filmmaker working today that uses that severe "The Shield" type of camerawork to great effect and that's Paul Greengrass (United 93 & The Borne Ultimatum) sadly, Berg went more for the Michael Bay school of directing (movement over plot.) Who needs to see every single scene with that much movement?

But wait, there are more problems with film.

Second, we have the story itself. Screenwriter, Matthew Michael Carnahan (brother of Joe Carnahan) seemed to think that we needed the cliff notes version of the history of Saudia Arabia during the opening credits and then to proceed to ignore much of it during the story itself. Carnahan gives us way to much backstory that is unnecessary and pointless. He also gives us cardboard cutout cliches for characters, but more on that in a moment. The heart of the story is as unbelievable as it is simplistic as it ultimately boils down to two distinctive and trite conclusions: Americans are spoiled, brilliant rebels with a sense of entitlement and everyone else is stupid, inept terrorists. I know that movies are supposed to be escapist and all that but c'mon this was just plain ridiculous. We all know that in real life that our government can't solve crimes in two days just by looking at the scene. This film played like an hour and a half episode of "CSI", but without the charisma.

Next, we have the characters. The four so-called "elite" FBI team that goes in to solve a terrorist bombing are the epitome of one-dimensional characters. Jamie Foxx plays the group leader with that super cool, mumbling way of his. Jennifer Garner plays a forensic expert who wears super tight tank tops in a Muslim country and doesn't realize that there's anything wrong with that. Did I mention that she is always sucking on a lollipop? I can almost hear the screenwriter now, "Let's give her an edge!" Then we have the always reliable Chris Cooper who is always relied on to play the redneck CIA, FBI, DEA or NSA operative, only this time he REALLY plays up the good ole boy thing to great irritation. Finally, we have Jason Bateman playing his usual smartass role. Hey, it (sorta) worked for "Arrested Development!" These guys are supposed to be the elite? If by "elite" they mean that they can all handle AK-47's by going all "Rambo" in a foreign country then I guess it works. I guess my definition of elite means something else entirely.

But what really bugged me was that this so-called elite experts on the Middle East were just so ignorant of the culture itself. They actually thought it was okay to bring along someone on their team that was Jewish and had Israeli stamps in his passport and a woman that is so clueless about the Muslim world that she didn't think twice about sucking on those lollipops in her tight tank tops in front of everyone and that she was actually surprised when the Arabs told her that she couldn't even touch the dead Muslim men as it was offensive. What, they didn't get the memo? Maybe they should have watched the opening credits!

Finally, the look of the film had major issues. Someone thought that in order to portray a desert properly they needed to have the entire film look sepia toned. What they got was a weird look somewhere in between "The Matrix" and "Soylent Green." And oh yeah, Arizona DOES NOT look like the Middle East!

But in all this doom and gloom, there were some positive things like the explosions, the car chase scene and the gun battle at the end. Those were all done real well. But alas, a few good gun fights and explosions does not a movie make, or something like that.

I think the message the filmmakers were trying to convey is that terrorism is bad but instead they just made a bad film.

Do your self a favor and skip this one entirely, not even on DVD.

Musings Grade: D-

-- Janaki Cedanna

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