The Kingdom

I love Peter Berg’s previous work (Very Bad Things, Friday Night Lights) and I really liked this too. I’m glad he continued to use the handheld shaky-cam technique that works so well on Friday Night Lights.

The kingdom of the film’s title here is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The excellent opening credits gives a quick history lesson to those who are a bit behind on US / Mid-East relations and then we’re taken into a great scene of a terrorist attack on a US compound in Riyadh. From there, the FBI sets up an elite taskforce to go to Saudi Arabia and kick some ass.

Of course politics gets in the way of the ass-kicking so the FBI dudes (and dudette) have to work around the protocols. There was one scene that I really loved involving Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner, two of the FBI agents, where they give the beating of a lifetime to some poor Arab terrorist. I could only laugh at the thought of them playing the lovely suburban couple looking to adopt a baby in Juno.

Anyway, the film as a whole is quite decent. 6 crumbs out of 10.

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