HOLLYWOOD provides the Islamic world another reason to hate America with “The Kingdom,” a xenophobic, overblown, revenge-driven action thriller that exports the “Rambo” mentality to the contemporary Middle East.
The opening montage depicting the history of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia raises expectations of a serious, politically incisive depiction of the region.
What we actually get is an offensively pandering, Bruckheimer-esque riff on the real-life Khobar Towers bombing of 1996, a Saudi Hezbollah attack that killed 19 Americans.
Depicting a terrorist attack on American oil workers in Abu Dhabi with terrifying skill, director Peter Berg ups the death toll to well over 100, including a couple of FBI agents.
This prompts the agency’s director (Richard Jenkins) to defy the attorney general (Danny Huston, a specialist in playing weaklings) by authorizing a covert mission to track down the killers.
The team’s leader, Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), has to blackmail the Saudi ambassador to even get into the country.
His cocky team improbably includes a female forensics expert (Jennifer Garner) who isn’t allowed to touch the corpses of victims under Muslim law; a Jewish intelligence analyst (Jason Bateman); and a crusty, older explosives expert (Chris Cooper, most of whose part seems to have ended up on the cutting-room floor).
A Saudi prince gives them just five days to help local authorities find the culprits.
Inevitably they do, even though Saudi investigators, who are consistently portrayed as inept, strip them of their weapons and lock them up at night.
The Saudis are so busy torturing suspects that they don’t notice the FBI team is ignoring their orders and secretly picking up evidence.
Fleury condescendingly makes a “present” of one key piece of evidence to his Saudi counterpart (Israeli-Arab actor Ashraf Barhom of “Paradise Now”).
The press notes for “The Kingdom” – a film distributed by Universal, a subsidiary of major defense contractor General Electric – laughably claim it isn’t political.
Berg and his screenwriter, Michael Matthew Carnahan, show undisguised contempt for the notion of Middle East diplomacy, embodied here by the casting of Jeremy Piven (“Entourage”) as the weaselly American ambassador, who is constantly trying to talk the FBI team into going home.
Not only do our heroes solve the crime in record time, they mysteriously re-acquire their weapons, and many more, when the terrorists kidnap Bateman’s character for use in a Danny Pearl-style beheading video.
At this point, the flick morphs from a police procedural into a full-on revenge fantasy – again, expertly staged, and with a huge Arab body count.
Perhaps in an attempt to mute criticism, this is followed by an utterly disingenuous coda suggesting there isn’t all that much difference between us and the enemy. Huh?
The implicit message of “Rambo” and its many imitators is that we would have won the Vietnam War if we had simply bombed that country back to the Stone Age.
“The Kingdom” seems to be arguing – consciously or not – that there’s a risk of the same thing happening in the Middle East unless heavily armed Americans with a vendetta are given license to perform executions at will.
THE KINGDOM
* 1/2
C.S.I. Abu Dhabi.
Running time: 110 minutes. Rated R (graphic violence, profanity). At the E-Walk, the Village East, the Orpheum, others.