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.

It’s in the nature of present-day geopolitical thrillers that all the bad guys appear to be sworn enemies of the United States. But, in the fullness of time, we discover the truth behind the Big Lie: the US is the sworn enemy of everyone else too, the master puppeteer pulling the strings while all others stand around helpless and powerless.

So The Kingdom is truly a surprising movie. It does not take this approach, and unapologetically depicts a heroic crew of good guys going into Saudi Arabia in pursuit of those who slaughter innocent Americans in Allah’s name. Needless to say, this is controversial: The Guardian gave it one star out of five, as did The Irish Times, which called it “as simplistic as it is jingoistic as it is irresponsible”. But the fact that all the right people hate it will make this terrifically entertaining thriller a must-see for others.

True, we don’t know the names of the terrorists at the receiving end of US retribution, but when did you hear anyone complain that we don’t know the names of the Nazi soldiers in Saving Private Ryan?

The film opens at the living quarters of US oil workers in Riyadh just as a softball game turns into a bloody, explosive massacre, one that’s compounded when another bomb goes off after first responders hit the scene. The inspiration is very clearly the real-life horror of the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, when 19 US servicemen and one Saudi were killed by Hezbollah, possibly with al-Qaida’s connivance.

At that time, the Saudi government showed an unprecedented degree of co-operation in the immediate aftermath. FBI forensic teams were permitted to scour the grounds in search of evidence.

The team we see in The Kingdom has a personal motivation: one of their own, a universally admired FBI agent, is among the dead.

After the double-bombing sets the pace, the rest of the film comes in three distinct but equally engaging parts. Each details a different set of difficulties in responding to a terrorist attack. For the first hour, the FBI crew attempts to navigate both bureaucratic hurdles and various Saudi strictures in the hope of actually being allowed to investigate the case.

The US Department of Justice worries that more boots on the ground will simply provoke further action (resulting in the pleasingly dry riposte that “not to go after criminals because they might harm you is not a policy of the FBI”). Nor is the State Department keen on the idea of a US presence on the scene. The film’s director, Peter Berg, is clearly deeply cynical about Washington’s commitment to anything but mealy mouthed self-promotion.

Eventually, the crew get to the Middle East, win over their Saudi hosts, and begin combing the bomb site in order to decipher what went down and who might be responsible. For about 40 minutes in the middle of the movie, the frustrations of trying to do police work in a police state are the focus. The action cuts back and forth between the team members as each turns up scraps of evidence.

Then there’s a riveting, shoot-’em-up finale as the team finds itself under extreme duress in a Riyadh slum; the hardware comes out and the bullets start to fly.

But this is no simple action movie. Not only is it perfectly paced but the difficulties presented by the Saudis’ defining brand of Islam are subtly explored. The film deftly conveys a chilling sense of a society frozen in repression. The problem here is not only terrorism but Saudi culture itself, unalterably opposed to the independence of mind that is the FBI crew’s best weapon.

Where else would we see a female medical examiner, on the verge of a breakthrough, suddenly, hysterically, interrupted when she reaches over to touch a Muslim victim? Or young children being schooled in murder as they play with dolls and marbles? Or, for that matter, a US State Department official so craven that he tailors his every word and gesture to avoid offending those who embrace this culture?

So as the sequence whips by in a frenetic, gut-tightening frenzy, swift and brutal, it serves as an announcement of the film’s central premise: Islamic terrorism is a genuine, serious threat after all. The question is, what’s to be done about it?

THE State Department man is played, with toothy obsequiousness, by Jeremy Piven, part of a terrific cast led by Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman. But perhaps the most arresting performance of all is by Ashraf Barhom, playing a Saudi colonel who comes to appreciate that US investigative methods are superior to those of his own closed society.

Ultimately, of course, for all its clever disguises, The Kingdom is really nothing more than a satisfying fantasy — but as geopolitical fantasies go, The Kingdom is pretty close to the mark.

Yes, many of the film’s initial questions go unanswered. There’s always a tension inherently embedded in any movie like this: which is more important, action or ideas? Ideas are given a healthy amount of play but, in the end, at least in Hollywood, the gun is mightier than the word. By the time the film ends, the screen is filled with the bodies of dead terrorists and no apologies are made for the thrills provided by taking them out.

Still, to his credit, Berg doesn’t merely dish out cinematic justice and call it a day. Instead, his film suggests, for once, that killing terrorists might be the right thing to do but, even if it offers plenty of temporary gratification, it doesn’t address — and may even exacerbate — the root problems.

In The Kingdom, even justified vengeance is no solution. It’s a crisp, well-shot and moral movie that deserves more serious treatment than it has received from some reviewers who seemingly cannot bear to see the US rendered as anything but the evil empire of this century.