AML DVD Review: “The Kingdom”

The Kingdom was one movie I had always wanted to see mainly because part of it was filmed not more than seven miles from my house on the Loop 202 freeway here in Chandler, Arizona. They closed a stretch of it for filming, changed the language on the signs to Saudi Arabian characters (the setting of the film) and used it for a major action sequence.

They also shot some other scenes in Mesa and Phoenix and sadly they had three tragic deaths while on location here.

It was kind of fun to see the stretch of freeway in this movie knowing I’d driven down that path before, but they did a remarkable job making it look like you were in another country.

Peter Berg directed this film and if you aren’t aware, he is the guy behind the TV series Friday Night Lights. There were some definite, major moments in this film where I thought for a bit I was actually watching a scene from that show. The music, the timing, the shots…all like Friday Night Lights.

This is the plot of The Kingdom, taken from Wikipedia:

The film is fictional, but inspired by bombings at the Riyadh compound on May 12, 2003 and the Khobar housing complex on June 26, 1996 in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The story follows a team of FBI agents who are sent to investigate the bombing of a foreign-workers facility. Screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan has summarized the plot as “What would a murder investigation look like on Mars?â€?

The movie starts off with a huge production of the credits, showing almost every step along the path that it took to see the Twin Towers fall on 9/11. Right off you feel like you are in store for a political piece along the lines of A Mighty Heart, or Charlie Wilson’s War, but that doesn’t last too long.

There is a scene with all the FBI agents in a room talking about the attacks and what the plan is, and Jason Bateman enters the picture with a funny little quip. I absolutely love Bateman, who was one of the best things about Arrested Development and also did a nice job in Juno, but the moment basically changed the movie from a serious affair to an action adventure for me.

And it continued on until the very end and it was pretty entertaining. The “murder investigation on Mars” was done well, and you could pretty much believe that it would be that hard to be an FBI agent trying to conduct an investigation.

Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper and Bateman are all enjoyable to watch and the ending was pretty solid for what it was.

AML Rating: B