By Steven Boone
The Kingdom is a two-faced liar. It promotes the idea of bloody American exceptionalism in the same breath that it sings We Are the World. Just like those CNN reports that show U.S. soldiers high-fiving Iraqi kids while giving out candy, it uses sentimental music and editorial sleight of hand to insist that whatever our servicepeople and intelligence agents do Over There, they do it with love.
Peter Berg's procedural about FBI agents investigating a terrorist bombing at a US compound in Saudi Arabia generates most of its suspense from the effort to discern "good" Saudis from "bad" ones; and from the question of whether the Americans will come out of this adventure in one piece—all others be damned. This is that same old song of empire and paternalistic love-at-gunpoint that made John Wayne tip his green beret. But Wayne didn't live to see the kind of filmmaking that Berg practices. In the style of Traffic, Black Hawk Down, United 93 and Saving Private Ryan, The Kingdom uses chaotic visuals to enforce a sense of absolute realism that is more insidious here than any state-commissioned propaganda.
FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) arranges a top secret five-day trip to Saudi Arabia to find the perpetrators. His team: The old pro, Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper), the smart-ass, Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman), and The Girl, Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner). Once on the ground in the authoritarian state, Fleury and company don't get much cooperation from Saudi officials who disdain Americans elbowing in on their jurisdiction. Saudi protocol ties Fleury's hands, as he must stick to his hosts' itinerary and await permission to probe crime scenes. Colonel Al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhoum) is a distinct pain in the ass in this regard, until Fleury wins his trust over time.
The Kingdom celebrates American solipsism and arrogance, demonstrating that foreigners, particularly Ay-rabs, are due only a token respect. Their customs are to be tolerated, not understood, as time is of the essence when Americans have been killed. Completing the investigation trumps all other considerations. But Foxx and crew soon realize that they can't just bust in and take over, so they grit their teeth, speak a little more slowly, and cooperate with the Saudis' unreasonable demands. Meantime, Berg lets Foxx get his Miami Vice mirror-shades swagger on. His performance seems designed to illustrate what's special about Americans, our bluster and ignorance mitigated by a supercompetence you just can't get anyplace else: Fleury ultimately gets a Saudi crown Prince to grant his team more leeway by saying, "America is not perfect, but we are good at this."
Good at what, exactly? Keeping cool, for one thing. In the second worst scene of the movie, a joint Saudi-American raid on some suspected terrorists leaves the wrong suspects dead in heaps. Foxx and his crew survey the room of mostly teenage corpses with mild regret. When Jermey Piven shows up, for the second or third time, as their super-slick liason, he stops dead in the middle of his usual bullshit spiel to retch and hyperventilate at the sight of the bodies. At the screening I attended, audience members snickered, as if to say, "What a suit-and-tie pussy." The laughter was inappropriate, but the filmmakers' callous presentation told me that laughter is what they were going for.
There are a lot of cheap jokes, fish-out-water bits of business and solemn exchanges along the way. Jason Bateman plays an audience surrogate for civis who couldn't imagine firing an automatic weapon. He brings out Berg's gift for directing lighthearted comic ensemble scenes, constantly serving as the group's sarcastic, neurotic bullshit detector. Few actors can whine so charmingly. Colonel Al-Ghazi is the film's Gunga Din, a Saudi officer who bonds with Fleury not because they're at roughly the same place in their respective chains of command, but because, deep down, Al-Ghazi's an American-in-training. He hates terrorists and loves freedom. He grew up on American TV shows like The Green Beast, known in America as The Incredible Hulk. At first menacing and mysterious, he becomes a cuddly sidekick by the time he and Fleury chuckle over their love of Bruce Banner.
When the investigation's five days are up, the team must return home resigned that, because of the photo-op and spin Piven's character and other beauracrats have orchestrated around their failed raid, they will be greeted as heroes. But the terrorists finally come out of hiding and attack Fleury's caravan on the way to the airport. They kidnap Leavitt, precipitating the film's worst, most powerful sequence. The bad guys drag Leavitt to their hideaway and sit him down for a videotaped beheading. The movie crosscuts between Fleury's team shooting their way out of the ambush to go after the kidnappers and Leavitt's captors beating him, firing up the camcorder and waving the scimitar menacingly. Berg draws out the suspense agonizingly, as the evildoers have battery trouble (or something) with the camcorder while Fleury plows through traffic. Cinematographer Mauro Fiore (Training Day, Smoking Aces), the Vittorio Storaro of action flicks, throws the Private Ryan epileptic camerawork into overdrive. When Fleury and crew finally get to the hideout, they have to shoot up a city block full of bad guys. As the smoke clears, a soldier says, "This very bad neighborhood." Sykes responds, "No shee-it." So now we're watching Die Hard in the sand.
I haven't had such a queasy sensation of excitement and sorrow since the Klan's race-to-the-rescue in Birth of a Nation. What makes this whole shoot-em-up truly monstrous isn't the body count (standard for a Ho'wood action flick) but its monumental concern for the fate of one American FBI agent, mingled with its complete disregard for the nondescript Arabs milling through this firefight, multiplied by the impression of sobriety and humanism the film has spent 90 minutes struggling to convey. Nasty. As an acton stylist, Berg has been compared to Michael Mann, but the legendary shoot-out in Mann's Heat never lets you forget that innocent civilians (not just the favored protagonists) are in peril on a real city street, nor the terrible obscenity of it all.
Once inside the terrorist hideout, Mayes frees Leavitt and they both engage the enemy in a gory hand-to-hand struggle that had the audience I was in whooping and clapping. Catharsis never felt so ghoulish and cheap. But it gets worse. Spattered with blood, Mayes wanders into another room, where a little girl, a woman and an old man are cowering on sofas. They've heard the whole thing. When Mayes extends her hand to comfort the little girl, the child reaches out and inadvertently presents a piece of evidence that tells her the bomb mastermind is in this room. When Mayes sees that the old man is missing some fingers, she knows she's found her man. Another firefight, close quarters, brutal. The honorary American, Al-Ghazi, catches a fatal bullet but doesn't die until he's had his Gunga Din moment with Foxx, who let's him know he's dying with honor and whatnot. The film wraps up with the last of two solemnly scored montages that cut between the battered FBI agents returning home and the survivors of the raid reflecting upon the futility of vengeance.
It's not that The Kingdom doesn't know what it really wants (blood); its just afraid to tell you straight-up. You might bail. So we get the unique spectacle of a film that comes on all brotherly like Grand Illusion while stoking blind rage fit for a Rwandan radio broadcast circa 1994.
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Steven Boone is a New York-based critic and filmmaker, a contributor to Vinyl is Heavy and the publisher of the pop culture blog Big Media Vandalism.
Saw this last night and had similar feelings. Thought the filmmaking and action sequences were done well, but they sure stacked the deck in favor of the righteousness of the American characters.
And the final scene of the movie where the same line is said by two characters suggests a deeper movie that wasn't the one I was watching.
Sounds like the movie doesn't fit your ideological litmus test. To boil down your review: not anti-american, not good. Reading your review further, it doesn't sound like the words of a film critic but someone who fashions himself a purveyor of ideology manifested in film, a blowhard breathless pundit, a cinematic gatekeeper who can't stand to have ideas different from his own promulgated. You're not a content filter – there isn't a Steven Boone or MZS box that I can put on my DVD player or film projector to tell me what content is appropiate or 'nasty' and I wouldn't want one. That is NOT film criticism. I have no idea reading your review how effectively Berg portrays the themes you find so despicable on film, how well does he execute his direction. Your review, in fact, is as simplistic and shallow as you allege Berg's film to be. Moreover, I doubt very much that you would view Valley of Elah or Redacted through the lense of scrutiny you view the Kingdom, which does not even have the airy self-seriousness and manipulative pathos of the anti-Iraq(American) films currently opening. Say what you will about Berg and his film, but at least he is not a hypocrite.
Aaron, I'd say that Berg is quite the late-model hypocrite, because The Kingdom's tacked-on coda to the frenetic, awesome-dude-USA!-USA!-if-you-don't-like-it-you're-a-terrorist-fag action is precisely the sort of thing that middlebrow filmmakers who want to be taken seriously in spite of the jingoistic action and bulletproof protagonists they put on screen to attract viewers like you do.
Give my regards to Michael Medved and Mark Steyn.
Aaron,
I'm on the run, so a more detailed response will have to wait, but for now…
If you're looking for an appraisal of Berg's film that's closer to the strict definition of film criticism, let me take a stab at it: Berg does an outstanding, technically flawless job of serving up imperialist bullshit.
I feel I should engage your points further, despite the fact that you shot yourself in the foot right at the gate: "To boil down your review: not anti-american, not good." The "anti-American" charge is the conservative hack's Swiss Army knife. I am madly in love with the most pro-American movie of the year, Rescue Dawn. That film is about what it's about. The Kingdom is about convincing us that there's nothing wrong with our government agencies that can't be fixed by giving free rein to a few loose cannons who know what's best for us all.
As for going soft on ideologically correct works… Oliver Stone tells me things I agree with all the time, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing that Born on the Fourth of July is about as subtle as a Wayans Brother in drag.
If you've seen The Kingdom, I'd be curious to hear your take on it, ideoloigcal or whatever.
This going to sound simplistic, but I don't care. Can't we just allow movies to be movie? When did everything become about the idealogical messages? I've known for months that this film a straightforward action film that happens to take place in Saudi Arabia. Everything I've read so far about it seems to indicate that it's a very well-made action movie. Why can't we just allow it to be an action movie, instead of trying to hold it up against all the problems facing the world today?
Andrew, because it is not a well-made action movie, due to the heart full of bullshit that Steven notes above.
Also, a better movie could sustain such questions without being diminished, and a great movie can be magnified by the questions that it provokes.
"It's just a movie" is the sort of excuse that lazy people make to sidestep, for example, charges of hypocrisy or the ugly imperialist subtext, or the responsibility to think about such things for themselves.
We know why Steven Boone can't accept the film for what it is: because if it offends his politics — and it's not, contrary to what he claims, that the politics are unsubtle, it's that he disagrees with them — then he has to reject it as a work of art (or craftsmanship, if that's all "The Kingdom" is). Aaron's right: this is the kind of absurd bloviating that THND should be trying to avoid, not showcase. (Of course, we also had to wade through the nonsensical N.P. Thompson piece on "Into the Wild" recently, too. It's been a bad week for Matt's editorial choices.)
Personally, I hate it when critics inject their political animus on a film. It's gotten really out of hand in these Bush years, since so many critics lean left and they see Bush behind every…tree.
I realize this film is closer to the war than Georgia Rule, but come on. You can hate the politics behind Triumph of the Will and still appreciate it's a masterpiece of film making. This is by now means a propaganda film. It just has a pro-US point of view, which is in keeping with the main character's POVs.
Let me guess, you'll just LOVE Rendition when it comes out.
fblair: That's an untrue accusation, and Boone's unabashed love for "Rescue Dawn" — as conservative and apple-pie a Vietnam picture as has ever been released in this country — proves it.
I'm a liberal who loves Peckinpah, John Milius, John Ford and Don Siegel, none of whom share my politics. The House has writers of every political stripe, from Reagan Republicans to Marxists. Nobody is expected to keep their own politics out of an article, because that's what the mainstream press encourages (the pretense of "objectivity") and the result is consumer reportage that denies what movies are and how we respond to them.
I've talked to Steven pretty extensively about his feelings on the movie, and the review is consistent with what he expressed to me: that the film had no integrity and pandered to all sides, even though it was, in its heart, a very pro-interventionist movie that valued Arabs mainly in terms of how "American" they were (meaning sympathetic to the U.S. cause) and that adopted a gritty, faux-realistic style while serving up Joel Silver action picture-type nonsense.
It's ridiculous to demand that critics leave their political opinions at the door when reviewing movies, because all movies are political, even those — especially those — that pretend not to be. That doesn't mean that every review of every film or television series has to concentrate exclusively on the politics of its situations and images. But in the case of a movie like "The Kingdom," an action picture on a hot-button contemporary topic that is being sold as an apolitical escapist adventure, to fail to engage with the film's politics (and say whether they are as the movie claims they are) would amount to critical malpractice, or at the very least, cowardice.
On top of that, if a movie inspires an allergic reaction in a critic mainly because of its politics, why on earth should the critic have to go through the lame pantomime of "factoring it out"?
And when Rod Dreher, Michael Medved, John Simon or Camille Paglia write pieces blasting (liberal) movies specifically because of their politics, do you get similarly steamed?
As for "It's been a bad week for Matt's editorial choices," if you don't like Boone or Thompson, both of whom did compelling work this week, stop reading them. And if you fail to grasp what the site is — a portal to writing by critics of different ages, geographical locations, political leanings and experience levels, where you click the link knowing you might dislike either the writing or the opinions — it's your problem, not mine.
I believe in judging a movie on its own terms. This one clearly was trying to be more than an action film, particularly the coda at the end. The movie starts with a history of Saudi Arabia and a graphical image of the planes hitting the World Trade Center, so it clearly wasn't trying to divorce itself from reality.
Personally, I wasn't offended by the politics, as I was not impressed with the simpleminded, often self-contradicting way it attempted to present them. I had the same problem with how "The Passion of the Christ" depicted Catholicism, which was met with the response from some that those who hated it must be "anti-Catholic".
Also, do all of those who disagree with the review would be as vehement if the political views of the writer matched theirs? Or are they guilty of their own ideological litmus test?
Plus, counter-arguments that cite "Birth of a Nation" or "Triumph of the Will" conveniently omit the fact that one cannot and should not write about these films without acknowledging that they are politically and morally repugnant. On that score, I think Steven did the right thing: when writing about "The Kingdom," he judged the politics and the filmmaking and said he disliked both.
If Steven had agreed with the politics but disliked the filmmaking, he would have said so, and he probably would have given the movie a mostly negative review. If, on the other hand, he'd disagreed with the movie's politics but adored its direction, he would have said so, and I suspect the review would have been positive.
Steven's honesty, consistency and transparency are among the qualities that make his criticism so valuable to me.
First of all, the idea that "Rescue Dawn" counts as a conservative picture is absurd. It has no meaningful politics, and makes no substantive commentary on the nature of the Vietnam War. Why is it conservative — because it doesn't dismiss Dieter as a baby-killer?
"And when Rod Dreher, Michael Medved, John Simon or Camille Paglia write pieces blasting (liberal) movies specifically because of their politics, do you get similarly steamed?"
Well, of course I do — or, I do on the rare occasions when I bother to read them. It's tiresome to know in advance what a critic's reaction is going to be, and annoying to watch a a critic's distaste for a film's politics infect his entire understanding of a film.
"I'm a liberal who loves Peckinpah, John Milius, John Ford and Don Siegel, none of whom share my politics."
Bravo. I'm a liberal who loves all those filmmakers, too — well, maybe not Milius so much. But we're talking about Steven Boone here, not you. And forgive me for doubting whether, if John Ford was resurrected from the dead and made "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" about Iraq, Boone would be willing to appreciate its artistry. It's easy to say you love conservative filmmakers — a label I'm unconvinced is accurate, in any case, when applied to Ford (or is "The Grapes of Wrath" too right-wing for you) — when they stopped making movies around the time you died. Who's the last conservative filmmaker you wrote approvingly about?
"To fail to engage with the film's politics (and say whether they are as the movie claims they are) would amount to critical malpractice, or at the very least, cowardice."
Engage with the politics all you like. But it might also be useful to engage with the filmmaking as distinct from the politics, too. Boone keeps saying that the action is "ghoulish and cheap." Why? Because it doesn't treat violence with the attitude he believes it deserves, because it doesn't recognize the "terrible obscenity" of it and acknowledge the Saudis as real, rather than faceless. So if you see violence as genuinely cathartic in certain circumstances, if you admire the willingness to put a lost comrade above all else, or if you simply want to make a movie about people who feel that way, then you can't make a serious film. That's complete nonsense — why don't we bring back Mike Gold to explain to us the party line?
I'm all for essays that try seriously to engage with a film's politics. But it is striking how often, when a film violates traditional liberal pieties from the right, engaging with its politics means dismissing it wholesale, while when a film violates them from the left, it usually means a nodding glance at best. To take just one example: I've read lots of criticism of Dovzhenko's great film "Earth." I have never read a critic talk about that movie's politics, which essentially constitute a brief for Stalin's eradication of the entire class of kulaks, as invalidating its artistry. But Peter Berg dared to make a vaguely pro-American — whatever that means — movie at a time when we're at war. He must be a hack, then.
One other thing: you really think calling "The Kingdom" the equivalent of an incitement to genocide — "stoking blind rage fit for a Rwandan radio broadcast circa 1994″ — is in any way responsible or thoughtful criticism?
First, Mr. Boone maybe you, and others, could avoid cheap partisan labels which are not amenable to any kind of discussion. You�ll notice in my comments that I didn�t attempt to impute a partisan loyalty or motive to you but rather engaged your comments and I would appreciate if you would do the same.
One of the very few critics that I trust is Ty Burr at the Boston Globe because he evaluates a movie based on the skill with which it is rendered irrespective of politics and he is intellectually consistent. If he repudiates a movie whose politics he dislikes for reason �a� then he will evaluate movies for which he has a political affinity by the same standard. Regardless of what Matt says, most critics fail miserably in maintaing this level of intellectual integrity. They chastise the Kingdom for its simplistic themes and poorly drawn characters, but when movies like Redacted and Elah come along with their broad brushed, maudlin thematics and paper-thin characters they fawn over it with gushing praise. I should not have extrapolated your review Mr. Boone to surmise your opinion on these other movies; that was my mistake. That said, I think Burr has the best take on the movie which he reviewed favorably. He admits that the Kingdom has a strong current of �Death Wish� vengeance pumping its pulse but he admits he was really entertained b/c it was so well done. But he also says, and I agree, that the movie is nowhere near as overtly �imperialistic� or �jingoistic,� or whatever other euphemism you wish to use, as you make it out to be. Burr, judging by the ending, perceives the violence and vengeance of the movie as a Trojan horse to whip up the audience into a lather and then show them with the ending (which I won�t give away) the consequences of those impulses. I thought it was a brilliant insight and one you may want to think about before getting in too indignant of a lather yourself.
To answer your question as far as my take on the film, I thought it was very good though certainly not flawless. The action sequences are as viscerally mesmerizing as I have seen in a long time. I think Berg makes Bourne look like a stage show at Knott�s Berry Farm. Contrary to your review, I thought it had a brain. It demonstrated the fecklessness of Washington bureaucrats in solving issues like terrorism very well and was cognizant of the difficulties presented by the culture clash with our allies in the region. Believe it or not, Berg did his homework. The obstacles demonstrated in the movie are similar to the obstacles faced by Clinton�s FBI director Louis Freeh when he sought to investigate the Khobar Towers attack in 1996. Ideologically, yeah, *gasp* it�s pro-American. But I think you are taking the movie�s politics way too seriously. Joe Biden isn�t going to go see the Kingdom tomorrow and all of a sudden announce his undying loyalty to the Bush doctrine.
I think the problem is that most political movies coming out of Hollywood are ideologically informed by Noam Chomsky, and anytime someone goes right of that, the cheap labels and ad-hominem attacks come out. It is the same where I go to school. I think the Kingdom�s politics are more analogous to Peter Beinart who I respect very much. Beinart works from two basic assumptions that most moderate liberals work from and which deviate significantly from Hollywood and Chomsky. 1) However bad the results, American intervention in the Middle East is paved on a road of good and noble intentions. No wacky conspiracies to enrich Halliburton or any of that. And I think the Kingdom reflects the noble intentions of people in government service like soldiers and FBI agents. 2) That there is a serious and credible threat of Islamic terrorism and extremism which requires serious and significant reform in the region which the United States has to play a role. Those are two assumptions that is anathema to the anti-American politics of Hollywood. Berg�s the Kingdom is the first movie that doesn�t blithely portray Americans as the �bad guys� in the region but as people who can do good, and bring reform to a region that is in desperate need of it. No moral equivalence. The movie uses the police colonel to show that there are moderate muslims who need to be empowered in order to isolate and destroy the extremists. How to accomplish that and where to draw the line between the use of soft and hard power is a complex question that no movie can ever have an answer for and one I would not portend to have the answer either.
"It's ridiculous to demand that critics leave their political opinions at the door when reviewing movies, because all movies are political, even those — especially those — that pretend not to be."
Damn straight. Nobody watches – or makes – a movie in a totally "objective" (whatever that is) state. Your experience of art, as well as the art you create, is ultimately filtered through all your beliefs, not just your aesthetic preferences. To pretend otherwise is just that – pretending. Or just not knowing any better.
Aaron b's last response — particularly his last-man-on-earth regard for Peter Beinart (Peter Beinart? seriously? in AD 2007?) and the very familiar "You'll notice in my comments that I didn't attempt to impute a partisan loyalty or motive to you but rather engaged your comments and I would appreciate if you would do the same" — puts me in mind of "Flamer Bingo," a classic thread over at Making Light (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009186.html).
I expect we're in for a comment about "real liberals," "the ones like Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan," before midnight.
fblair: I offered that list of conservative-friendly filmmakers to illustrate my own attitude toward this subject as a critic and publisher. And yes, I would absolutely put John Ford on that list. Having directed "The Grapes of Wrath" doesn't disprove the description. Until well into the 1950s, Ford was pro-Manifest Destiny, and far more likely to burnish American creation myths than to challenge them ("Young Mr. Lincoln" being a case in point). And even "The Searchers" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," while more complex and in some ways ambivalent about these matters, don't question the idea that "taming the frontier" was an innately good, or at least morally neutral idea, and the problems had more to do with bad guys and individual failures of judgment than the overall conception of winning the West. Ford didn't get around to delineating Native Americans as full-fledged human beings, as opposed to faceless or underdeveloped antaonists, until "Cheyenne Autumn," which was pretty clearly an apologia and dull because of that.
Thing is, Ford didn't have all that much to apologize for because he presented a strong point of view bluntly, and with such visual elegance, and innovation, that you had to bow to the man's skill no matter what you thought of the movies' messages. I haven't seen evidence that one could say the same thing of Peter Berg, who's a decent director, but one who can't really be said to have a vision — just a knack for documentary-affected camerawork, naturalistic performances and nice moments of observation. Mentioning him in the same breath with Ford or even Milius gives him too much credit, but that's sort of the point here.
Nobody's really broached two of the basic questions I posed above:
First, somebody please explain why it's unacceptable, unethical or unhelpful for a critic to say, "I despise this movie's politics, and now I'm going to tell you why"?
If the supposed guidlines to proper reviewing propsed in this comments thread were followed to the letter, critics would watch "The Birth of a Nation," "Triumph of the Will," "Red Dawn" or "American Beauty" and confine their discussion to whether the performances were convincing and the picture moved well. That's perfectly OK for readers who see movies as, first and foremost, a way of killing a couple of hours. But if you accept the proposition that movies both mirror and shape their society and their historical moment, such criticism is basically useless. On top of which, it's evasive, and untrue to the responses of the critic. Any critic who can sit through the movies cited in this paragraph and not have a powerful, politically or morally based reaction and then want to go out and describe that reaction to the world and analyze the cinematic techniques that helped draw it out of them, is someone who should not be writing criticism.
Second, tell me, seriously — what useful purpose is served by critics interpreting an innately political art form, movies, by trying to factor out politics?
Whose needs are being met by that sort of writing? What is their agenda?
Why, 40 years after the heyday of Simon, Kael and Sarris, is this notion of good criticism still considered the norm, and why is anyone who disregards it spanked for their effrontery?
I know the "review the movie and shut up" approach is still considered the industry norm. But I don't think such an approach is conducive to a fully engaged evaluation of movies. Even when the piece is entertainingly written, or incisive about the specifics of filmmaking (a subject most newspaper and magazine criticism avoids like the plague), I usually find that the result reads more like consumer reportage than criticism. "It excited me," "The lead actor is great" or "I loved it but it might not be your cup of tea" doesn't do it for me as a reader, no matter how passionately and eloquently the critic finds a way to say those things.
I absolutely loved the critical response to "The Passion of the Christ" and "Fahrenheit 9/11″ because whatever the critics (and op-ed columnists) had to say about the films' messages, they were writing about the film's messages — their world views, their preconceptions — and not pretending they didn't have any. For once, they could not escape their duty. Some of them executed it with more imagination or nuance than others, and a lot of the reviews, pro and con, were crap. But at least it was lively and honest, and for a brief time, the entire press corps stopped pretending that movies could be uncoupled from the economy, society and history that helped create them.
Finally, in passing: Aaron B's comment above (7:50 p.m.) is passionate and persuasive. It also suggests to me that Steven's approach this movie was the right one. The plot of "The Kingdom" is founded on certain assumptions about America's role in world politics, the nobility of its intentions and the basic decency of its government agents, as well as the idea that intervening in Middle Eastern politics, pre or post-9/11, was not only defensible, but unavoidable. The movie might articulate all this in a muddled way, or it might be too encrusted with action movie cliches. Or perhaps, as Steven suggests, the tail is wagging the dog here, and what we're talking about is a dumb-ass action flick prettified with a veneer of political consciousness and camerawork and editing that signify "authenticity."
In any event, if the movie is straightforward in its politics, why should the reviewer not be?
Since Steven has no trouble defending himself, I'll tag out here.
Matt, have you actually seen the movie? It's a bit hard to tell from your comments, which are strangely vague.
In any case, I don't think it's "unacceptable, unethical or unhelpful for a critic to say, "I despise this movie's politics, and now I'm going to tell you why"? It just tends to be boring. And it's especially boring when the critic's politics are as unnuanced and singleminded as those of Steven Boone. I mean, if you read Boone's blog, you know his basic take on the world is that America can do no right because the government is the lapdog of corporate interests who have brainwashed the American population with televised propaganda. I can predict, unerringly, which films Boone will like and which he won't. So when he writes that "The Kingdom" is bad, all he's really saying is "my politics are the same as they've always been." Pardon me for not finding that all fascinating.
More important, the problem with Boone's work, specifically, is that his ideological biases often blind him to what's actually happening in a movie. Take his description of Colonel Al-Ghazi as Gunga Din. There is no basis for this in the film. In fact, it's clear that the friendship between Foxx and Al-Ghazi is based precisely on their love and dedication for their work, that they're members of the same professional class. (It's no surprise that Michael Mann produced the movie, because it has the same affection for and investment in the value of professionalism as Mann's movies do.) When Gunga Din dies, Cary Grant feels like he's lost his mascot. When Al-Ghazi dies, it's clear that Foxx feels (and we feel) that he's lost a friend.
Even from a political point of view, Boone's piece is bizarre. As someone's already mentioned, he compares "The Kingdom" to the radio broadcasts that the Hutus used to incite genocide against the Tutsis. This is a disgusting slander at best. But it's also quite telling about Boone's view of the world. The Tutsi, after all, did nothing to justify the Hutu's attacks on them. Does anyone here really believe that Americans have no cause for complaint — and no understandable desire for vengeance — against the Salafists who blew up the Khobar Towers and then flew two planes into the World Trade Center? "The Kingdom" is explicitly not a movie about Iraq or about the need to wage war on Arabs — it goes to great (at times even hamhanded) lengths to represent Saudis who are both Muslims and not anti-Western. It's a movie about the battle against Al-Qaeda and its disciples — these are literally the people that the FBI is fighting in the film. Is it really, as Boone suggests, "ghoulish and cheap" to show no concern for the deaths of the kind of people who literally chopped off Daniel Pearl's head? Or is fighting them (as opposed to, say, invading Iraq) not rather the definition of a just war?
Now, one might say that the problem lies in the decision to make this film in the first place, that although the fight against Al Qaeda might, in fact, be justified, there is no way to represent it on film without pandering to the kind of jingoism that has given us Iraq, Guantanamo, etc. I don't agree with this, but I can see the argument being made. And had Boone written that piece, it would have been the kind of intriguing, nuanced engagement with a film's politics that you, Matt, seem to be looking for. Instead, he gave us an essay suffused with anti-Americanism and predicated on the idea that any use of violence by Americans in the Middle East is imperialist and unjustified. If he'd just written, "No blood for oil," it would have saved us all a lot of time.
Knew: Yes, but I'm trying not to re-review the movie here because it's Steven's piece, and also because I'm exhausted and about to turn in. If he says he wants me to jump in with a longer analysis tomorrow, I will — for now I'm confining myself to the context around this argument, which is about the proper approach to reviewing a movie like "The Kingdom." Sorry if I came off as strident — I encountered similar arguments many times while writing about documentaries and TV news coverage for the Star-Ledger; I'd get letters saying, in effect, "Why can't you write about coverage of the Clinton impeachment/the Iraq war/the 2004 election without bringing your politics into it?" I got the same complaints on occasion when I reviewed overtly political movies for Dallas Observer or NYPress, and I was always baffled by the thinking behind them.
You write, "Now, one might say that the problem lies in the decision to make this film in the first place, that although the fight against Al Qaeda might, in fact, be justified, there is no way to represent it on film without pandering to the kind of jingoism that has given us Iraq, Guantanamo, etc. I don't agree with this, but I can see the argument being made." I wrote a review of a movie a few years ago that discussed the concept of a "liberal action film" — in other words, that if a director made a movie that was skeptical towards the idea that war, or force, was a solution to a problem, rather than evidence of some sort of failure that led to that point, then it couldn't really be an action film, because action films are inherently conservative in that regard. I'll see if I can track it down somewhere, because it's a better reply to your point that anything that I could come up with right now, with my focus flagging.
Damn, I go out to dinner and come back to all this.
Er, um, some random points:
-I agree with Steven Santos, who said above that he believes in judging a film on its own terms. In the case of The Kingdom, I saw a movie that made some lazy passes at even-handed humanism but, indeed, stoked a truly disgusting bloodlust in the audience.
-This flick goes on my list of recent despicable odes to violent retribution with Man on Fire, 300 and Running Scared. (Actually 300 is also disgusting for embracing Third Reich-style eugenics, rabid homophobia (Frank Miller is a sick fuck), portraying intellectuals as boy-buggering pansies, and being all-around dumbass.)
-I can't speak for any other critic, but the only obligation I try to meet when writing a review is giving my reaction to a film. And in my reaction there's bound to be my politics, my dreams, my desires, my personal pain, and my accumulated "wisdom" about the matters at hand.
The pieces I write for THND are not Blockbuster Picks of the Week or 60-Second Previews or Moviefone blurbs. I'm not here to tell you whether you should spend $11 on a movie. My reviews are me. I leave it to you to parse and judge from there– but I'm a little shocked when somebody instead chooses to focus on what a critic should and should not leave on the table.
I figure that MZS would be content just writing for The New York Times and other mainstream outlets if he didn't feel that writers should also have a place to air their opinions without worrying about alienating advertisers and subscribers. He came of age as a critic at The NY Press, where at one time a menagerie of writers from all political persuasions cut loose and slap-boxed weekly under the lash of publisher Russ Smith, a mad dog conservative. I never asked Matt about it, but I'll bet he appreciates that kind of forum. As a reader, I know I do.
-fblair: "I've read lots of criticism of Dovzhenko's great film "Earth." I have never read a critic talk about that movie's politics, which essentially constitute a brief for Stalin's eradication of the entire class of kulaks, as invalidating its artistry. But Peter Berg dared to make a vaguely pro-American — whatever that means — movie at a time when we're at war. He must be a hack, then."
Berg is not a hack; I wouldn't be so upset if he were. I mentioned that the film's "worst" scene is its most powerful. I compared it to Birth of a Nation, a film which lifted me out of my chair the first time I saw it– and also made me want to vomit. I say that Berg is great at directing quiet ensemble chitchat. If I thought he weren't persuasive and powerful as a filmmaker, I wouldn't give him this much consideration.
I also think that Karl Rove is eloquent and a brilliant strategist. Joseph Goebbels and Edward Bernays were also quite brilliant. You can use a hammer to drive a nail and you can also use it to bludgeon a baby.
Movies are real to me. They mean something out in the real world. They kill people. I sincerely believe that. On another post, I spoke of a film potentially "stopping the violence." I believe this is possible. I believe that certain sentiments, applied forcefully enough in the culture, can change the world for the better. Films like The Kingdom perpetuate a tribal, warlike sensibility that we're already full-up on– no matter the mealy-mouthed expressions of remorse tacked on at the end.
Yes, I see Rwanda radio '94 in a lot of Ho'wood movies addressing the War on Terror. It's just that these filmmakers are telling us to kill the "cockroaches" in less explicit terms.
Steven, maybe this is at the core of what I don't understand about your take on "The Kingdom": you seem to be arguing that the use of violence — and the cathartic feeling that its use is just — is, by its nature, unacceptable (or immoral, or unpalatable). But surely it matters whom you're using the violence against, what they've done, the threat they represent, etc. There is no reasonable argument that would find it immoral or politically noxious to kill members of Al Qaeda in battle, and so it's hard to see how it could be immoral or "ghoulish" to represent that violence or to find it cathartic. (Again, it's possible that the representation of just violence necessarily leads people to embrace unjust violence, but that's a different question.)
I'm even more mystified by your continued endorsement of the Rwanda analogy. You really see members of Al Qaeda as the equivalent of ordinary Tutsi citizens? You see no meaningful moral difference between massacring innocent civilians (as the Hutus did) and killing members of Al Qaeda in open battle? That just seems frankly insane to me.
[b]Boone: [/b][i]This flick goes on my list of recent despicable odes to violent retribution with Man on Fire, 300 and Running Scared.[/i]
Here's where I gotta disagree with you. While you may found it despicable, I firmly believe that it's impossible to make a thrilling action film that doesn't, at least on some level, love and embrace violence. Even the more thoughtful directors, like Peckinpah, who tried to delve into violence and and analyze and its meaning and effects, on some level truly enjoyed filming and perfecting it. Every form of violence is a terrible plague upon this earth, but it is also one of the key foundations to storytelling and it always has been. I agree with Matt when he says it's not really possible to make an action film that is skeptical towards the use of violence, although I don't really think it's a conservative principle so much as a storytelling principle. A movie can't present "kick-ass action" while at the same time trying to condemn its use. Whenever a movie tries to, it seems to be shamelessly pandering to both sides of the issue (i.e. The Brave One). Show me action film that doesn't love violence, and I'll show you a failure as a film.
Mr. Knew: You said, "Take his description of Colonel Al-Ghazi as Gunga Din. There is no basis for this in the film. In fact, it's clear that the friendship between Foxx and Al-Ghazi is based precisely on their love and dedication for their work, that they're members of the same professional class."
My review mentions that "they're at roughly the same place in their respective chains of command" but contends that Jamie Foxx's character is clearly the Alpha here, even though he's on Al-Ghazi's turf. I also thought to mention Al-Ghazi's personal stake in the investigation, since he lost comrades in the blast, but the sentence was getting long. My bad, but I would file even that narrative thread under sentiments the filmmakers are waay less passionate about than the action scenes.
I'm not sure how to respond to the charge that I equate killing Al Qaeda with exterminating innocent Tutsis. It's as if my emphasis on innocent civilians who get their lives destroyed in these firefights went unread. And guess what? We can kill all the Al Qaeda on earth; it ain't gonna move us a centimeter closer to straightening out the global disorder that's really making us unsafe.
Looking back, there are so many outrageous claims in this thread, I don't know where to start:
aaron b: "I think the problem is that most political movies coming out of Hollywood are ideologically informed by Noam Chomsky, and anytime someone goes right of that, the cheap labels and ad-hominem attacks come out."
Noam Chomsky? Let's have a list of post-911 Ho'wood political flicks that dispense Chomskyology. I can think of only one that comes within 100 miles of that: The Good Shepherd.
aaron b: "Burr, judging by the ending, perceives the violence and vengeance of the movie as a Trojan horse to whip up the audience into a lather and then show them with the ending (which I won�t give away) the consequences of those impulses."
Actually, this was the lamest Trojan horse I've seen in a coon's age. The audience actually laughed at that ludicrous last double line. The film is sloppy (and brings Berg and screenwriter Matthew Carnahan closest to hack status) during these soul-searching moments. When it's time to kill, though, Berg is as keen on his targets as a Blackwater sniper. Wonder why.
fblair: "Engage with the politics all you like. But it might also be useful to engage with the filmmaking as distinct from the politics, too."
I can't seperate where a director chooses to place his camera, or what lenses he uses, from his worldview. < --Look, the word "view" is right in there. Just saw The Darjelling Limited, a film in which rich brat Wes Anderson shows me his vast heart through mis-en-scene and selection of focal lengths that carry moral/spiritual/philosophical weight. Anderson understands film images and movement so much that he trusts them to tell the world, "Yeah, I know my movies are about rich brats and their petty problems, but there are decent, yearning souls among us who can't help what we were born into. We're trying against some steep odds to do right. Also, I love you, all of you." I believe him, and love him for it.
Berg's jostling camera tells me to ignore all that textual yingyang about American-Saudi cooperation, dedication, mutual respect, etc.– let's bust some ass! Let's GET SOME!
I want to see a whole movie about one boy in one village who has to endure an American/Al-Qaeda firefight, or an airstrike, or a rocket attack. Why does the world stop only when Jason Bateman dies?
Out in the world beyond geeks typing into blogs, there are a lot of ignorant people whose TV sets have taught them to fear and despise the Arab and Muslim world. The Kingdom doesn't egg them on so much as say, "We're trying to help these miserable bastards over there, but look what they made us do?"
JJ sez:
–"The road to American intervention in the Middle East is paved with good intentions….No conspiracy theories to enrich Haliburton here."
BWAAA HA HA HA HAH HA HA! Ha ha ha ha ha haaaa ha ha ha….
That's just…I mean, that's…excuse me for a second…
Ha ha ha ha ha!
Look, gimme a break, okay? Don't make me ill.
I would like to throw in my two bits, by the way, that this slightly-to-the-left-of-Robin-Wood Massachusetts liberal is also a fanatic John Milius fan, and can't wait to see The Kingdom, because Berg is a superb technical director and the action sequences sound great. Does this make me a hypocrite? Yeah, I suppose it does. Do I much care? Nah. There are some films and filmmakers I absolutely, totally, will not support or patronize. Micheal Bay, for one, the official State Propagandist of the Bush Administration. This movie? I think as long as you recognize it's drawbacks and negative qualities you can still enjoy the shootouts.
I'll finish by reminding everyone of what Tarantino once succintly pointed out: That when it comes to movies, America is A country. It is not THE ONLY country. The Kingdom is going to be shipped all over the world, to Muslims everywhere. Portraying Americans as jacked up militant bullies blowing away Arab cannon fodder is probably not the image we want to portray right now to the rest of the world. I'm not saying films like this should'nt be made. I'm just asking filmmakers to think carefully about them and take responsibility if they do.
"I'm not sure how to respond to the charge that I equate killing Al Qaeda with exterminating innocent Tutsis. It's as if my emphasis on innocent civilians who get their lives destroyed in these firefights went unread."
Why are you not sure how to respond to the charge? As far as I can remember, there are no innocent civilians who get killed in "The Kingdom" by the FBI-Saudi team. In fact, every single person they kill (aside from the ones killed in the terrorist attack) is shooting, or driving a getaway car, or trying to cut someone's head off, when they get killed. So when you say "The Kingdom" is the equivalent of telling people to kill the Tutsis, then it makes me wonder why you can't draw a distinction between killing innocent civilians and killing heavily armed terrorists (or insurgents or freedom fighters, or whatever term you want to use), when the film itself insists (again, to the point of hamhandedness at times) on drawing that distinction.
Now, you can easily and fairly say that the lack of civilian casualties is unrealistic. But "The Kingdom" is quite explicitly not about justifying the indiscriminate use of force to save American lives. If it was, it wouldn't be about putting three not-all-that-heavily-armed FBI agents into an Al-Qaeda-supporting neighborhood. It would be about using the 10th Mountain Brigade to clear out that entire neighborhood. This is Tony Scott's point in his review about this being a kind of anti-Iraq movie: "The Kingdom" is predicated on the idea/fantasy that the U.S. should hunt down those responsible for killing Americans — and only those responsible, instead of randomly killing thousands of civilians, as we essentially have done in Iraq. So again, it makes me wonder why you have a problem with the U.S. killing Al Qaeda members.
Also, if "Syriana" didn't express enough Chomskyology for you, then you're pretty far out there.