By Curt Schleier

It is as viscerally exciting as the spy thriller with the added bonus of ripped-from-the headlines veracity.  Director Peter Berg has done a remarkable job filming a series of action sequences and explosions; the process was made all the more difficult because it was shot in desert heat, in America’s southwest and the United Arab Emirates.

Special kudos are also due Jamie Foxx, who plays FBI agent Ronald Fleury and once again reveals his remarkable range.  It seems Foxx has come out of no where to become one of the country’s pre-eminent actors.

THE KINGDOM, of course, is Saudi Arabia, where a group of fundamentalists evade security, get into an American oil company compound and in a well thought out series of attacks and bombings kill over 100 American men, women and children, and wounding more than twice that.  

 On the one hand, this is a story about pig-headed, stupid politicos.  The FBI is charged with investigating the homicides of Americans on foreign soil.  Fleury is especially anxious to get involved in this case because a close friend and fellow agent was killed in the terror attack.  But of course our government won’t allow that – we don’t want to risk offending the Saudis, do we – and the Saudi military and police ranks are filled with incompetents concerned only with protecting their turf.

But Fleury, who has information that could embarrass the Saudi government, negotiates – that is, blackmails – an agreement that allows his special task force five days in Saudi Arabia.  When they arrive, however, they are greeted with suspicion.  They are placed in the protection of police Col. Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), the head of the police unit that was apparently infiltrated to allow the terrorists access to the compound. 


Fleury and Al Ghazi eventually build a bond of mutual respect, and the Arab cop finds ways to get around the restrictions imposed by a Saudi prince only interested in photo ops for the evening news.  Together the close in on the terrorist group at about the same time the terrorist group is closing on them.

The cast is uniformly excellent, with Chris Cooper, Jamie Garner and – surprise – Jason Bateman playing agents who are part of the special FBI terrorism task force.  Ali Suliman as some of the good guy Saudi cops and Jeremy Piven as an American diplomat are all perfectly cast.

In terms of sheer exhilaration, the scenes of the terrorist attack and a subsequent battle near the end of the film are as adrenalin-inducing as anything I’ve seen since the opening D-Day invasion scenes from SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. 

However, there are thoughtful, almost literary moments, as well.  FBI director James Grace (Richard Jenkins) is brought to task by the attorney general for allowing his people to go to Saudi Arabia though they were ordered not to.  He’s told his career in over to which he replies that when he served in Vietnam under Gen. Westmoreland all the officers were told to write their obituaries.  After that, he continues, you realize that nothing is permanent.  So the AG’s threat is meaningless.  If only we had a few more government officials less concerned with their careers than with doing the right thing, we’d probably be a lot better off.


At the beginning of the film, after she just finds out that her colleague has been killed in the attack, Agent Janet Mayes (Garner) breaks down in tears and Fleury whispers something in her ear.  When the chief terrorist is dying, he whispers something in his grandson’s ear.  At film’s end we find out what it is – and ironically it is the same thing.

We will kill them all.

Fade to black.