Rating of
1.5/4
"The Kingdom" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 04/06/12
In the aftermath of a terrorist attack on an American civilian compound in Saudi Arabia, Jamie Foxx and his team of FBI investigators invite themselves over to solve the crime. What we have here is your typical stranger in a strange land cop film relocated to the middle east. The CSI style investigators wobbly cam their way through the story bringing enlightenment to the ignorant, backward Saudis and deal out swift justice, American style ie blow the shit out of everybody with a towel on their head. I'm sorry, but this was the biggest load of simplistic, patronizing gung ho bullshit I've seen this side of a Rambo film, and dressing it up in pseudo-documentary cinematography does not change the fact. It makes no attempt to show the motivations or culture of the Saudis and even the US contingent are vacuous stereotypes doling out some pretty ugly violence (some of the most distasteful of which is perpetrated by Jennifer Garner of all people.) Instead of genuine depth it prefers cheeseball close ups of children's faces to sappy music and the "message" at the end is laughable. The action is efficiently directed, but as a whole it's pretentious trash that reminded me of a straight-faced live action version of Team America: World Police.
