The Kingdom is a compelling counter-narrative to anti-US films

IF you have been to see Hollywood’s latest blockbuster, The Kingdom, and came away just a little bit confused, don’t worry, you’re not the only one. When was the last time you went to see a movie that portrays the Americans as the good guys, on the winning side?

After the predictability of Syriana, Three Kings and The Bourne Supremacy, you sit there and wait expectantly for the twist. Surely, at any moment, there will be a scene in which it is revealed that the bombing of a US housing compound in Saudi Arabia — The Kingdom’s central event — was not the work of Islamic terrorists but rather of an evil oil company?

Surely the conspiracy will go as high as President George Bush himself? What happened to the pivotal scene when the war on terror is revealed as an evil travesty and US troops as psychopathic murderers? Why didn’t the Yanks make a horrific mess of things? Where’s the hero asking, “Why do they hate us?” — that stock-in-trade of liberal Tinseltown directors? The Kingdom is indeed a very odd movie. Right down to its spot-on ending that recalls the beheading and dismembering of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, the expected never happens.