'The Kingdom' is the Most Balanced Terrorism Film to be Released this Fall

UPDATE: I was wrong about some of the thing I said in this post! Yeah, I'm admitting it. Read my updated thoughts here.

A couple weeks ago I caught a sneak preview of 'The Kingdom' directed by Peter Berg. The film revolves around the bombing of a US military base in Saudi Arabia in 2003. A small FBI team travels to the Middle Eastern country to investigate the crime.

In the film, both the Saudis and the Americans learn to cooperate in order to find the terrorists. The Saudis don't want to admit that it might be one of their own citizens and impede the investigation at the beginning. But then they realize that it is in their best interest to cooperate.

The most powerful part of the film is when the orchestrator of the operation is found. This top guy and his family first appear as a peaceful Saudi family. All the terrorists underneath him in his organization were more rogue and easier to detect. It was stellar imagery on just how difficult it is to determine just who is behind terrorist acts.

It reminds me of school aged bullies. In order for bullies to work, they have to put forth a mixture of being nice and being mean. The confusion prevents their victims from recognizing what they're really all about.

Terrorists are bullies to an exponential degree.

Berg does insert his own politics into a couple of places, but nothing terribly overt. He suggests that the American consumption of oil is the reason the terrorists are against us, though history proves that terrorism has been around since before cars and oil were commodities.

Berg also seems to believe that our desire to protect oil in the Middle East is a bad thing. And on the basis of that belief, he tries to demonstrate that the United States is no different and certainly no better than the terrorists themselves. It's really a shame that so many people believe that.

But if you look a little closer, it's easy to see that even these arguments don't hold up well. In the beginning of the film, Berg presents his audience with a limited historical timeline of the relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East. The timeline suggests that we originally went to the Middle East to search for water.

What if cars were powered by water and therefore were environmentally sound? We might still have an interest in the Middle East and the terrorists would still target us.

This only demonstrates that political issues require more depth of thought than typically offered up by mainstream culture. It's easy to say that Bush was a liar or Pelosi isn't accomplishing anything, but the truth is that politics and lawmaking and foreign policy have no easy answers.

Still, The Kingdom will demonstrate how difficult these issues are more than I anticipate upcoming war-related films will. In seeing the trailers and reading reviews about 'Rendition', 'The Valley of Elah', and especially 'Lions for Lambs' (which Berg appears in), it seems Hollywood will once again be exposing its left-leaning politics. I wouldn't have a problem with this except for the lack of films offering up other perspectives. Even if right-leaning films were produced, they would be accused of being propaganda for the administration.

It would just be really nice if we could cool the harsh rhetoric on all sides and dig a little deeper into the issues instead of just assuming the worst about people we disagree with.

On a lighter note, the cast of 'The Kingdom' did a phenomenal job. Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner gave us the performances we've come to expect from them. Jason Bateman brought his funny guy stuff until he was captured by the terrorists - and then WOW - what an incredible performance! Piven was himself and it was funny. It's nice to have a little comic relief in such a dark subject.

I will give Berg credit for a mostly balanced film. I read that he was trying to produce a balanced film with this effort. The scales still tipped a bit left for me, but overall he did a phenomenal job.