Oil, Allah, vengeance — and a socko car bombing that seems to detonate in your lap: “The Kingdom” hits you hard.
Starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner as FBI agents investigating a terrorist attack on Americans in Saudi Arabia, the film is sort of a faster, bloodier, more ruthlessly linear “Syriana.”
The first couple of minutes especially will catch your attention. They’re given over to a lightning-speed, multimedia CliffsNotes version of events in U.S.-Saudi history — oil springs out of the sand, America races in to suck it up, cozying up to the royal family, then fundamentalists see their country run amok with nonbelievers, yada, yada, boom: Sept. 11 happens. Director Peter Berg talked about mainlining history along with violence and suspense.
In the opening of “The Kingdom,” you make the case that Sept. 11 is explainable. That its roots can be traced back to clashing views and that the terrorists are not just crazies wanting their 77 virgins when they die. But don’t you risk turning off audiences by humanizing the terrorists?
For sure, they’re not just crazy people, and the roots do go way back. There was the USS Cole, the embassy attacks in Africa. Clinton was throwing bombs at bin Laden in the ’90s. … But to not humanize them is to ignore them, and to ignore them is to become vulnerable. To not hear it — or not understand what’s going on — is not going to help.
Why did you begin with that rundown of events in Saudi Arabia?
People don’t know that 17 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi; they thought they were from Iraq. They don’t know Osama bin Laden was from Saudi Arabia; they thought he was from Iraq. I felt we needed to make them realize that Saudi Arabia is important and relevant to their lives. But in a world where we’re so obsessed with Lindsay Lohan’s driving and Paris Hilton’s driving, I guess it’s not surprising that people don’t think that much about Saudi Arabia.
What made you think audiences expecting a guns-blazing action pic would digest a straight shot of sociopolitical history?
I think audiences are smart, and I think if you make it entertaining, they can take in anything. I liken it to getting a child to do homework. I have a 7-year-old son, and under the right circumstances, he’ll do anything.
Are we more primed for the fact-based tick-tock because of the success of “An Inconvenient Truth”?
I did talk to the company (that developed the opening sequence) and said, look, if “An Inconvenient Truth” can make global warming appealing, we should be able to make U.S.-Saudi relations, in three minutes, compelling.
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The Kingdom (R)
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Who’s in it: Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman
What it’s about: A terrorist bombing on a U.S. oil base in Saudi Arabia launches FBI Agent Ronald Fleury (Foxx) on a mission to flex American muscle and whup some Arabs. His crack team (Cooper, Garner, Bateman) has its hands full trying to break through local resistance and get the job done.
Worth watching? “Screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan wants us to know that there are good Arabs and bad Arabs, but he panders to our basest Sept. 11 anxieties, exploiting our collective horror at the fate of journalist Daniel Pearl and the smoldering potential of aging, radical Muslim clerics.”
[ JAN STUART, NEWSDAY ]
