Saturday, September 29, 2007
A+E

Indirect Hit

Action scenes often confusing in ‘The Kingdom’

(From left to right, foreground) Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper in Kingdom CREDIT: Courtesy of Universal Pictures

“THE KINGDOM” Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner Directed by Peter Berg Rated R Wide release

By Steve Warren

Some movies should only be watched on DVD, where you have the option of pausing and reversing if you miss something. You’ll want control over “The Kingdom” for two reasons: to help make sense of confusing action scenes and to identify the dozens of characters introduced in the film.

In some sequences, you can’t tell who’s doing what to whom. Worse, you might not know who those people are, anyway, because the subtitles showing their names and affiliations appear so quickly, they’re very difficult to keep up with. What exactly is Jeremy Piven’s function anyway?
From the beginning, “The Kingdom” is off to a flying start, as 75 years of history is presented in about 90 seconds. We see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia established in 1932 and oil discovered there the following year. In 1938, the Arabian American Oil Company is formed to exploit the resources of the world’s biggest oil producer (them) for the world’s biggest oil consumer (us). And so on to the present day.

In Washington, D.C., FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) is spending time with his young son, when he gets a phone call about a about a terrorist attack on an American compound in Riyadh. Fleury’s boss (Richard Jenkins) refuses to do anything in response, arguing that additional “American boots on Saudi soil” would provoke support for the extremists. So Fleury goes over his head and forces the Saudi ambassador to allow a group from the FBI to assist in an investigation for five days. Fleury’s team includes Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner), Grant Sykes (Chris Cooper) and Adam Leavitt (Jason Bateman).
Because the terrorists got into the compound by dressing as Saudi police—not to be confused with the Saudi National Guard, who wear camouflage prints—we still can’t be sure who’s real and who isn’t.

Saudi Police Captain Al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhoum), a reluctant liaison to the FBI team, interferes with their mission until he’s won over by Fleury’s charm—Foxx’s contract doesn’t allow him to be shown looking uncool.

From then on, “The Kingdom” is a straight-ahead procedural drama, with cultural differences thrown in for flavor. Director Peter Berg includes all the necessary information, while not always making it easily accessible. But when it comes to simulating chaos in the action scenes, he could be considered an overachiever.

Once the battle’s been resolved, a slight twist at the end delivers what can be seen as an antiwar message. It will also be seen as a slap in the face by various groups who insist their own violence is justifiable.

“The Kingdom” contains elements of “Black Hawk Down” and “Three Kings” but doesn’t equal either of them for artistic achievement or entertainment value. SP TWO AND A HALF STARS

Back in Action
Jennifer Garner returns to the spygame in “The Kingdom”
By Bert Osborne

What’s a dangerous covert FBI operation in Saudi Arabia when you’re Jennifer Garner, a.k.a. Sydney Bristow from TV’s popular espionage series “Alias”? What are a few physically challenging altercations for an actress whose earlier work also includes such action-packed movies as 2003’s “Daredevil” and 2005’s “Elektra”? In director Peter Berg’s “The Kingdom,” Garner joins Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman as part of an elite squad of agents assigned to track down and eliminate a terrorist bomber.

During a recent interview in Los Angeles, the 35-year-old actress talked about making the film—her first experience back on a movie set since she and husband Ben Affleck had a daughter, Violet, in late 2005.

Q: Did you meet with any actual female FBI agents in preparation for this role?

A: The FBI was incredibly helpful in the making of this movie. Those women are amazing. Just being around them was great. They’re real women who are armed and ready to go into really harried situations at a moment’s notice.

What other sort of research did you do?

We all spent time with different FBI officers. A group happened to be here in L.A. for evidence response training, and we just sort of showed up and joined their class out of the blue. They were learning about bombs and fingerprinting and other evidence retrieval kind of things, and in walk me and Jamie [Foxx] and Jason [Bateman], and they were like, “Huh? Sydney Bristow is in our bomb class?” [Laughs.]
It was great. We learned a ton of stuff about all the technical aspects of the job. We also trained with guns and weapons. That terrified me, even though we were only using paint guns. It made me so grateful that I don’t have to do that in my real life, that it’s just pretend. I can’t believe we’re sending these kids over there to do that.

Speaking of which, the movie walks a fine line between dealing with a very real situation over in the Middle East and exploiting it for the purposes of making an entertaining action movie.

But I think it’s also important to point out that what makes this movie so great to me is that you see all the characters 360 degrees, you know what I mean? The story humanizes our Saudi Arabian counterparts. We get to see them at home with their families, what life is like for them at the end of the day. There’s no judgment put on anyone. Ultimately, that’s the main point of the film, that we’re all the same. I loved that about the script.

How familiar were you with all the social or political history of the region?

I read a few books just to familiarize myself, but I’m not a very outwardly political person in the first place. I tend to leave that the other half of my family [laughs]. I probably focused as much, if not more, on everything that went into playing a forensics expert, what it would be like for a woman in those circumstances, more so than U.S. foreign policy or relations.

How did this movie’s fight scene compare to what you went through every week on “Alias”?

To be honest, I went in thinking it wasn’t going to be much of anything. I kept asking when we were going to start rehearsing it, because I like to go into those scenes 110 percent prepared. I mean, I can still do the fights from “Daredevil” in my sleep, and a bunch of the “Alias” ones, too [laughs]. I kept asking Peter when we were going to rehearse it, and I was getting a little nervous. Finally, the day came and, get this, he wanted to just improvise the whole fight. He was like, just get in there and try to beat the crap out of each other and let’s see what happens [laughs]. So, basically, the other actor and I just got in there and tried to kill each other, and it turned out to be an amazingly real scrabble. We had a blast. I loved shooting it. It was unlike anything I’d ever done before, pretty down and dirty. We had to cover up some scratch marks on my face for the next few days, where he tried to grab me and pull my face off. He had a scab on his ear, where I literally tried to take a bite out of him. It was nasty, but it was great. The only rule was, because I was breast-feeding at the time, he had to stay away from my boobs [laughs].Other than that, what are a couple of bruises? It’s not going to kill me.

Has motherhood changed the way you go about choosing your projects?

Well, there’s a natural priority now that there never had been before. I mean, I probably could’ve worked straight through this past year, because lots of great fun things came my way, but now I can’t bear the idea of going off to do something unless I feel like I absolutely have to.
Later this year, you’ll be making your Broadway debut in “Cyrano de Bergerac.”

We’re getting ready to start rehearsals and I’m freaking out, that’s how excited I am about it. It’s always been my dream of all dreams. All of this other stuff I’ve done in my career has been almost accidental. I always meant to be on the stage. I started out years ago understudying a play on Broadway [“A Month in the Country” with Helen Mirren], and I only ended up auditioning for TV and movies because I was so broke. When I finally got a miniseries, I had to take it, but I was such a theater snob. “Cyrano” was something I couldn’t pass up. Working with Kevin Kline, getting to play this role and say these words, just thinking about it gives me goose bumps. SP