Desert Kingdom

The Kingdom
Grade: C

Peter Berg’s The Kingdom avoids the pitfall that usually snags films about the modern threat of terrorism – it keeps from laying it on thick. Rather than the labyrinthine politics of Syriana or the preachy orthodoxy of last week’s In the Valley of Elah, this story of an FBI investigation of a terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia neatly captures our fears and rage while leaving plenty of time and energy for popcorn-friendly gunbarrel catharsis, thank you very much. In the long run, does that make it for the War on Terror what Night of the Living Dead is to the American Civil Rights Movement? As President Bush would say, who knows, we’ll all be dead then. But for today, its tense action ethic makes it not a bad night out.