The Kingdom (2007)

I am honestly not sure if Chris Cooper can play anything but a government agent, but here he is again. This time he teams up with Ray, Alias, and Arrested Development to try to solve terrorism in the Middle East. What you wind up sitting through is an inconsistent, drastically over-produced, disingenuous piece of knotted storytelling that still somehow manages to be entertaining, but only barely. The culprit is ambition. It's a story about culture clash between the Mid East and ourselves set in the framework (and with the overall depth) of a 2 hour long episode of CSI. It wants to be about the similarities between Western and Muslim society, about what it will take to reconcile our differences, but at the same time be as idiot proof and consumer friendly as possible. It's got the visceral thrill and the witty banter to keep your attention, but subject matter like this has higher demands than watching things go boom. Sure the faces are familiar and likable, sure the subject is topical and important, and sure the editing keeps to a gallop, but it never manages to rally itself into the galvanizing force it aspires to be, despite a very poignant moral.

6 out of 10.