Missing the mark.

I am proud to review my latest movie. It is called "THE KINGDOM" duh duh duh (evil sounding music). It's a pirate's R for violence and language.













Let us venture down a road. A road where you have a setup for a storyline that is a bit implausible, yet has a potential to say something without pounding into your head. Or maybe not you, but them, or maybe both. This movie COULD make a few points. Such as, America is right in punishing aggressors overseas, America's foreign policy is flawed, Americ'as foreign policy is okay, other nation's foreign policy is stupid, oil is bad, oil is good, oil is immaterial people are the real problem. Hey they could make all points at the same time and really throw both conservatives and liberals for a loop. Instead, instead, instead, after having suffered through some pretty horrific violence and our main character's struggle to follow a bread crumb trail that he is not allowed to see, we slide into amoral (immoral?) TV ending.

SPOILERS INCOMING.

Most of you are the type of people who avoid R rated movies so I'm not going to worry about spoiling anything in this movie. And if you are going to take time to watch an R rated movie if you are that type of person then this is not the one to do it with.

The beginning credits are a quick history of Saudi American and US oil relations. History Channel stuff, maybe a good place to end.

This piece of flop opens with the killing of over 100 americans who work in Saudi Arabia in a walled off area separating them from the Saudi population. Lots of violence here.

In washington or some such place a group of FBI bombing specialists are reacting to the bombing and are eager to get out to the sight to start discovering the what, who and hows. Something happens here that I'll tell you later. Jamie Foxx's character is the leader and works out with some fenagling his team to the bomb site. The Saudi's are cautious and have their police chief assigned to keep them from doing anything. Blah blah something about the bombers getting ahold of police uniforms and the chief in hot water, but he is a good guy.

So ensues the Americans discovering evidence while being kept from the site and slowly earning the respect of the police chief and then the local royalty and success, we have Saudi's and Americans working together and barriers broken and stuff. Now, dear reader, you may be starting to feel good and that you are on the verge of some altruistic point. The nobleness of humanity will giveway and we will have cooperative progress.

HAhahahHAHAHahahahahahahhahahahaHAHA. oh, you are wrong.

Instead the terrorists who have not 1 but 5 people infiltrated into the police blow up the convoy that is escorting the americans and steal Jason Bateman. Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner and Chris Conner with the help of the saudi police chief chase them down and before they can slice off Jason Bateman's head in front of a camera they kill the whole terrorist organization.

While they are recovering from this harrowing experience they take refuge in an apartment with the leader of the terrorist org, but they don't know it until some clue gives it away. Then the son of the guy shoots the Police Chief and they shoot him and the terrorist guy. This is where we hit the strange ending. The youngest son goes to his father and hears something from him. After the american's are back in US the rest of the crew asks Jamie Fox what he whispered to Jenn Garner back at the beginning when he was consoling her after they heard the news. "We will Kill them all". Which is the same thing the old bomb terrorist whispers to his youngest son before he dies.

This is baffling. Is this glorification? Is this shock value? You answer it yourself I guess. Instead I feel like a contrived storyline lost a chance to make a point. Should I have expected different?