The Kingdom is Worth the Price of Admission but It's Far from the Most Entertaining Movie This Year: Movie Review of the Kingdom

Starring Jamie Foxx (Ray, Collateral), Chris Cooper (American Beauty, The Breach), and Jennifer Garner (Elektra), The Kingdom is so well-realized that it's hard not to believe it's a true story. Unfortunately, as actually films go, the movie is not what you might call entertainment.

What is The Kingdom about?

A bomb goes off in the middle east. This is nothing new, of course, but it just so happens that the explosion killed many Americans that were staying in Saudi Arabia. Then a follow-up detonation gets an FBI agent killed.

The FBI are on the case right away. Leading the task force is Ronald Fleury (Foxx). The agent killed in Saudi Arabia happens to be a good friend of Fluery's. Unfortunately in order to get to Saudi Arabia, there are a few political hurdles. Then after black-mailing the Arabian Ambassador, Fluery and a team of three are on a plane.

The team consists of Grant Sykes (Cooper), Janet Mayes (Garner), and Jason Bateman (The Break-Up) plays Adam Leavitt. When they arrive, they're met with very little - if any, respect. Then the rules start piling up. You as an American can't do this, say that, go there, yada, yada. The Saudi Arabians put the FBI agents up in a school gym. This starts to become a problem for the American investigators as they are desperate to solve the crime that got their agent and so many Americans killed.

What they start to understand in the course of their restrained investigation is that the Saudi Arabians were hurt by the bombing(s) too. This opens up a whole new can of worms. Not only are the FBI agents out to kill the people responsible, but now they are out to protect the innocent locals.

My thoughts