My brothers and I had a discussion about who the best movie actors are in America. There was fairly wide consensus among us. Christian Bale, Denzel Washington, Johnny Depp, Russell Crowe. The conversation went sideways and we started talking about a number of others, but one name never came up. Jamie Foxx.
I don't really have it in for Jamie Foxx, no more than I do for Chris Tucker. I still haven't seen 'Ray' and so I still haven't seen Foxx act. I just did see The Kingdom. It was OK. The most memorable line in the film didn't come from any of the main chracters, it was from the FBI director. Anyway, I'm one of those movie guys who recognizes the lengths Hollywood goes to portray the FBI as pretty much the only federal agency worth spit. You'd be hard pressed to find a story where the nod goes to the CIA or the regular armed forces. The best ever in this regard, as far as I'm concerned is 'The Siege' with Denzel as the FBI guy, Bruce as the Army dude and Annette Benning as the CIA spy. It's probably the only one I can think of where the three tangle. And so with that in mind, half the plot of The Kingdom is managing to get FBI good guys on the ground in Saudi Arabia, so that they can then pursue your standard action flick.
The Kingdom is above average for pulling together some moderately decent performances from actual talented actors who have basically no rapport whatsoever. I don't know who directed this or how the picture came about, but it looked like all of the stars had somewhere else to be. Chris Cooper is in it. But he plays a loner best. Jennifer Garner is in it, she's best hogging the spotlight too. Jamie Foxx is in it, and he gets to hog the spotlight, but he is totally unconvincing as the leader of his crew. If you compare his big briefing in the wake of the calamity, with the similar scene in 'The Siege', you just know this whole movie is going to be a flop.
But it didn't flop. At least it was worth the 10 bucks for Spectravision on the wide screen in my hotel room on a Tuesday night. There's some honest to goodness drama and pathos in the flick. There's a decent buddy vibe going on between Foxx and his Saudi host, and there's a good scene where Foxx goes straight for the nuts of the prince at whose pleasure they remain in Saudi Arabia.
There are too many captions for the film to be a subtle look at the dynamic. It's basically a find the jihadi game of three mosque monte played in some very authentic looking locales. While at least one firefight looks like something out of an 80s Tom Clancy movie, there's some other pretty good shoot-em-up tactics that make it to the screen.
It's a good movie that doesn't insult my sensibilities, like that idiot one with Jake Gyllenhall. It's still not as good as Three Kings or even George Clooney's Syriana, but it's good enough to be mentioned in the same paragraph. Also, by the way, it's not as good as Rules of Engagement either.
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