The Kingdom

The Kingdom Information

The Kingdom is a 2007 action film directed by Peter Berg and starring Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and Ashraf Barhom, with Kyle Chandler, Jeremy Piven, Richard Jenkins, and Ali Suliman.

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 investigate the bombing of a foreign-workers facility in Saudi Arabia. Screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan has summarized the plot as, "What would a murder investigation look like on Mars?"

The film was screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival as its yearly "Surprise Movie: on 22 August 2007.

Plot

The opening scene of the film explains, through a timeline sequence, the origins of U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relations and how the discovery of energy resources has transformed the Middle East. It portrays the conflicts that have arisen since the late 1940s for the rightful ownership of the oil industry, including the Persian Gulf War in Iraq and al-Qaeda's growing network of terrorism. Eventually, it explains the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the fact that the majority of the hijackers were Saudis. This raises serious questions about the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States. The plot begins with the current struggle of Saudi Arabia and the kingdom's efforts to retain control of their country against terrorist extremists.

During a softball game at an American oil company housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda terrorists set off a bomb, killing many Americans and Saudis in the process. The terrorists impersonate members of the Saudi State Police. While one team hijacks a car and shoots at the residents of the area, another runs out onto the softball diamond, pretending to aid the Americans, but then reveals he is a suicide bomber and blows himself up, killing everyone near him. Sergeant Haytham (Ali Suliman), of the Saudi State Police, disables the stolen Saudi Police vehicle and kills the terrorists. A short time later, the FBI Legal Attaché in Saudi Arabia, Special Agent Fran Manner (Kyle Chandler), calls up his colleague, Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), to tell him about the attack. Shortly afterward, a second bomb explodes in the compound killing Manner and more people.

At FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C., Fleury briefs his rapid deployment team on the attack and casualties. During the briefing, Special Agent Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), a forensic examiner, breaks down in tears upon hearing of Manner's death. Fleury whispers something into her ear which causes her to control her emotions. While the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. State Department hinder FBI efforts to investigate the attack, Fleury blackmails the Saudi ambassador into allowing an FBI investigative team into Saudi Arabia. Departing from Andrews Air Force Base, Fleury and his team of Mayes, Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman), an intelligence analyst and Special Agent Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper), a bomb technician, go to Saudi Arabia. Arriving at Prince Sultan Air Base, they are met by Colonel Faris al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), the commander of the Saudi State Police Force providing security at the compound. Fleury soon realizes Colonel al-Ghazi is not in charge of running the investigation. In actuality, the investigation is being run by General Al Abdulmalik (Mahmoud Said) of the Saudi National Guard, who does not give Fleury and his team permission to investigate. Rather, they are to observe the Saudi investigation.

When the FBI team is invited to the palace of Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Khaled (Omar Berdouni) for a dinner, Mayes is excluded because of Islamic discrimination against women. While at the palace, Fleury persuades the Prince that Colonel al-Ghazi is a natural detective and should be allowed to lead the investigation. With this new change in leadership, the Americans are allowed a more hands-on approach to the crime scene. While searching for evidence, Sergeant Haytham and Sykes discover the second bomb was detonated in an ambulance, using marbles as projectiles. Fleury learns the brother of one of the dead terrorists had access to ambulances and police uniforms. Colonel al-Ghazi orders a SWAT team to raid the house, managing to kill a few heavily armed terrorists. Following the raid, the team discovers valuable intelligence, including multiple photos of the U.S. and other Western embassies in Riyadh. Soon afterward, the U.S. Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Damon Schmidt (Jeremy Piven) notifies Fleury and his team that they have been ordered to return to the United States. However, Fleury and al-Ghazi both believed the men that they had just killed were just amateur fighters and not the real planners behind the attacks.

On their way to King Khalid International Airport, Fleury notices a youth watching their convoy from an overpass, and then looks behind him and notices the last of four black Chevy SUVs in their convoy has slowed down, falling far behind. He then notices a speeding car coming toward them and grabs the wheel from Sergeant Haytham, which allows them to partially evade the collision of the speeding car into the first SUV in their convoy, setting off a trunk full of explosives. Their SUV, the third in their convoy, hits the first SUV. All of the occupants are killed, except one CIA agent (identified only as 'The Black Knight'), who escapes with minor fleshwounds. The fourth SUV finally drives up and the men inside pull out Leavitt, throwing him into the back and driving away while a second car drives by to shoot the surviving Americans. Fleury manages to wound one attacker, and al-Ghazi commandeers a civilian vehicle to chase the fourth SUV and the other car into the dangerous Al-Suwaidi neighborhood of Riyadh. As they pull up, a gunman launches rocket-propelled grenades at them and a fierce firefight starts. Inside the complex, Leavitt is tied up and gagged.

After killing their attackers, al-Ghazi decides that three of them must enter and find Leavitt, and two must stay behind and cover the entrance. While Sykes and Haytham watch the entrance, al-Ghazi, Fleury, and Mayes enter the building, following a blood trail, and manage to finish off many other gunmen inside. Mayes, separate from the other two, scares a little girl in an apartment, and she enters to find a family with little children, their mother, and grandfather. She yells at them to stay put and goes across the hall to another apartment, where she finds Leavitt and his attackers. She kills the remaining insurgents, and al-Ghazi and the team start to leave. However, Mayes feels unsettled about the little girl, and walks in to give the girl a lollipop. In return, the girl gives her a marble, matching the ones pieced together earlier from the bomb scene. Fleury then realizes there is a trail of blood leading to the back of the apartment, and al-Ghazi sees the grandfather, suspects something, and asks to help him up in order to inspect his hand. When the old man gives him his hand, al-Ghazi sees that the man is missing the fingers that Abu Hamza al-Masri is missing in the terrorist group's many videos and confirms his suspicion that the grandfather is the terrorist leader. Abu Hamza's teenage grandson walks out of the bedroom and manages to shoot al-Ghazi in the neck twice with a pistol before it jams, then he begins to point his gun at Mayes, prompting Fleury to kill him. Abu Hamza then feebly pulls out an assault rifle and Haytham puts three shots in his chest. As Abu Hamza dies, another grandson hugs him and Abu Hamza whispers something into his ear to calm the child down. Al-Ghazi dies in Fleury's arms.

At Al-Ghazi's house, Fleury and Haytham meet his family. Fleury tells his son that al-Ghazi was his good friend, mirroring a similar scene earlier in the movie wherein he comforted Special Agent Manner's son. Fleury and his team return to the U.S., where they are commended by FBI Director James Grace (Richard Jenkins) for their outstanding work. Afterwards, Leavitt asks Fleury what he had whispered to Mayes (earlier in the film) to calm her down. The scene cuts to Abu Hamza's daughter asking her own son what his grandfather whispered to him as he was dying. Fleury recalls saying, "We're gonna kill them all", while the grandson tells her mother, "Don't fear them, my child. We are going to kill them all", implying the war triggered a never-ending, vicious cycle.

Cast

Jamie Foxx as Special Agent Ronald Fleury, Team Leader
Chris Cooper as Special Agent Grant Sykes, Bomb Technician
Jennifer Garner as Special Agent Janet Mayes, Forensic Examiner
Jason Bateman as Special Agent Adam Leavitt, Intelligence Analyst
Ashraf Barhom as Colonel Faris Al-Ghazi, Saudi State Police
Ali Suliman as Sergeant Haytham, Saudi State Police
Jeremy Piven as Damon Schmidt, Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy
Richard Jenkins as Robert Grace, FBI Director
Tim McGraw as Aaron Jackson
Kyle Chandler as Special Agent Francis "Fran" Manner, Legal Attaché
Frances Fisher as Elaine Flowers, Investigative Reporter, Washington Post
Danny Huston as Gideon Young, US Attorney General
Kelly AuCoin as Ellis Leach
Anna Deavere Smith as Maricella Canavesio, Deputy National Security Advisor
Minka Kelly as Miss Ross
Amy Hunter as Lyla Fleury
Omar Berdouni as Prince Ahmed bin Khaled
Trevor St. John as Earl Ripon
Ashley Scott as Janine Ripon
Peter Berg as FBI Agent (uncredited)
Tom Bresnahan as Diplomatic Security Service Special Agent / Regional Security Officer (RSO) Rex Burr.

Production

Prior to filming, director Peter Berg spent two weeks in Saudi Arabia researching the film. Filming commenced July 10, 2006, on the west side of the old Maricopa County Courthouse in Phoenix, Arizona. Additional scenes were being filmed concurrently in Mesa, Arizona; the scenes at the American compound were shot at the Polytechnic campus of Arizona State University. In some of the trailer frames, saguaro cacti not native to Saudi Arabia are visible in the background. The scenes in the men's locker room at the beginning of the film were filmed in the men's locker room and detention area of the Gilbert Police Department. The FBI briefing scene was filmed in the media amphitheater/classroom in the same police building. The high speed driving scenes were filmed on Highway 202, which runs through Mesa and Gilbert, just prior to its opening for public use only a few miles from the ASU campus.

While shooting on location in Mesa, Berg was involved in a fatal accident that resulted in the death of another member of the production team. The SUV he was riding in collided with a John Deere Gator all-terrain vehicle driven by Nick Papac. Papac died three hours later. On August 8, 2008, Papac's parents Michael Papac and Michele Bell filed a lawsuit against the director, a driver, and the production company. The lawsuit was dropped in 2008. Filming resumed one day after the incident.

On-location filming took place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates for two weeks in mid-September. Since Universal Pictures does not have an office in the Middle East, the production was facilitated by a local production firm called Filmworks, based in Dubai. Filming also took place at the Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi.

The film's production cost $80 million. The Kingdom was released on DVD December 20, 2007.

Reception

Western reception

The film received moderate reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 51% of 180 critics have given the film a positive review, with a rating average of 5.8 out of 10. The site's general consensus is that "While providing several top-notch action scenes, The Kingdom ultimately collapses under the weight of formula and muddled politics." Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 0"?100 reviews from film critics, has a rating score of 56 based on 37 reviews. Weekly Standard columnist John Podhoretz called the film "perfectly paced" and "remarkably crisp and satisfying", arguing that it evokes the films The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Dog Day Afternoon, and The New Centurions. New York Times critic A.O. Scott called it "a slick, brutishly effective genre movie". He also stated that "Just as Rambo offered the fantasy of do-over on Vietnam, The Kingdom can be seen as a wishful revisionist scenario for the American response to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism." Evan Williams of The Australian called it "an excellent thriller" and stated that it "may be the first Hollywood film to confront Saudi involvement in international terrorism."

New York Post critic Lou Lumenick stated that "Hollywood provides the Islamic world another reason to hate America with The Kingdom," calling it "xenophobic" and "pandering." Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly accused the film of "treating its audience like cash-dispensing machines". Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times called it "a slick excuse for efficient mayhem that's not half as smart as it would like to be." He added that "the film's thematic similarity to those jingoistic World War II-era 'Yellow Peril' films makes it hard not to feel your humanity being diminished."

Middle Eastern reception

Faisal Abbas, media editor of the London-based international Arabic journal Asharq Al Awsat, wrote on the newspaper's English website that "despite some aspects which might be perceived by some as negative, many might be pleasantly surprised after watching this film, bearing in mind that Arabs have for a long time been among Hollywood's favorite villains." Faisal concluded that "In all cases, the film is definitely action-packed, and perhaps Saudis and Arabs may enjoy it more than Americans, as events are depicted as taking place in the Saudi capital?and it is not every day that you watch a Hollywood-style car chase happening on the streets of Riyadh. For Westerners, the movie might be an interesting "insight" to a culture that is very different to their own."

Box office performance

The film grossed $17.1 million in 2,733 theatres in the United States and Canada on its opening weekend, ranking #2 at the box office. It also grossed £919,537 in the United Kingdom, about $1.9 million. As of December 15, 2007, the film has grossed an estimated $47,536,778 in the United States and $39,042,352 at the foreign box office with a worldwide gross of $86,579,130.

The film has been extremely successful in the rental market, grossing $77.4 million in the United States as of April 13, 2008.

The film had been banned in several Arab countries for claims of being biased against Saudi treatment with terrorism.