Don’t ask me how we came to be watching this tonight as that isn’t important. What is important however is that you avoid watching this film. I have two words to offer you: Just. Dreadful.
I don’t know if this is something that always happens to director Peter Berg, but the plot is just terrible. We have the FBI agents out for revenge in a land that does not want them, the noble savages they befriend in their hunt for the bad guys (worse: the noble savages who must die so the FBI can get their guy), the bad guys who not only seem entirely irrational and inhuman to the point of barely coming across as actual people but ultimately incompetent to the point of bringing ruin upon themselves.
I mean, really. How is it possible that a terrorist cell sophisticated enough to kill close to 100 people within an American compound in Saudi Arabia can be brought down by the good guys when they’ve been bombed, shot at and traumatised within minutes of the final encounter? The indomitable American constitution? At least if Michael Bay was directing this they would have been honest enough to have the American flag patriotically waving in the background to some thoughtful music and montage of well-meaning glances and gestures.
Put simply, films like this piss me off. They piss me off because they make me feel cheated, cheated of precious moments of my life.
The one question I have after watching The Kingdom is this: how is it even possible that Peter Berg is allowed to make films?