‘The Kingdom’ will make your heart race

Published 10:04 am Thursday, August 23, 2012

Column: Philip Maras, Entertainment Corner

“The Kingdom” opens on a scene familiar all over America. A Little League softball game is under way. Parents are cheering their kids on. Other people are barbecuing in the background. Rows and rows of neat, orderly suburban housing surround the ballpark. Then the camera pans out to show palm trees, desert sand and a uniformed guard on a rooftop carrying an AK-47. It becomes instantly clear that this is not happening in America, but in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A narrator explains that over the years, American oil companies built several Western-style, high-security living compounds to accommodate their American employees who work, and therefore must live, in Saudi Arabia. Although these walled communities are guarded by Saudi state police, the strict Sharia law Saudi Arabians follow does not apply there. Certain elements find the very presence of these enclaves of the West in their kingdom offensive and intolerable.

Philip Maras

The calm of the bright, sunny day is quickly shattered by gunshots, and what follows is a highly coordinated and deadly act of terrorism involving gunfire, a suicide bomber, and later (after medical teams have moved in) a massive bomb. Into this mess is thrown an FBI investigative team consisting of Special Agents Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper), Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman). The FBI, we learn, is the lead investigative authority whenever Americans are attacked abroad, and this particular team has a personal agenda; one of their own agents died in the later bombing. The FBI team is reluctantly guarded by the head of the Saudi State Police, Colonel Faris Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), who sees them as a safety liability. He locks them up in a high school gymnasium at night and lets them out to “observe” the crime scene on a very limited basis, under his direct supervision. The target of the team’s investigation is Abu Hamza, an Osama bin Laden-like terrorist leader responsible for the attack.

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This film focuses much on the differences between the American and Saudi Arabian cultures: how poorly they treat their women, how the young Saudi prince seems more interested in going on safaris than actually catching terrorists, and how the Saudi investigators rely more on beatings and intimidation than searching for evidence. The film makes these differences seem insurmountable, because later when these differences are actually overcome and the two forces work together to catch Hamza, the moment is powerful.

The unexpected star of the film is Al Ghazi. He is at first suspicious of the FBI team, but as the two groups begin to build rapport and warm up to each other, overcoming the gap between their two cultures, Al Ghazi begins to assist the team greatly. The scenes involving Fleury and Al Ghazi becoming friends are some of the more endearing ones of the film. We also see glimpses of Al Ghazi’s home life and his family. This humanization of an Arab character is rare in a Hollywood film; he could have easily been a two-dimensional stereotype. One of Al Ghazi’s more moving moments in the film occurs when Fleury interviews the husband of one of the victims of the terrorist attacks. The man is angry, and shouts at Al Ghazi “Does Allah love your kids more than he does mine? Does Allah love your wife more than he does mine?” before he retreats back into his house. The camera then cuts back to Al Ghazi, struggling to hold back tears. In a way, Al Ghazi’s story is the most compelling one in the entire film. Fleury and his teammates are fighting to avenge their fallen colleague and bring a mass murderer to justice. Al Ghazi is fighting to protect and preserve his culture and to catch Hamza, who is an undeniable product of his culture and its clash with Western civilization.

On a final note, the last half hour or so of the film is one of the most pulse-pounding, nerve-wracking race-against-time sequences you’ll see.

Philip Maras is an Albert Lea resident and aspiring author who spends a lot of time playing video games and watching movies.