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Kingdom (The)
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - America - Universal Pictures Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (28th February 2009). |
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The Film
 With all the excitement that surrounds the Oscars, winning could easily appear to be the climax of an actor’s career. For some it’s definitely true, just look at Cuba Gooding Jr. who won 'Best Supporting Actor' in 1996 after some good performances, but ended up peaking early on as he hasn’t really done anything worth noticing since outside of a few spot appearances in award-worthy fare like “As Good as it Gets” (1997). Some get passed over and keep up the good work, like Peter O’Toole who has been nominated 8 times without winning (He was awarded an honorary Oscar in 2003), while others just keep on getting nominated and keep on winning, like Tom Hanks or Jack Nicholson. However no one seems to be able to avoid getting in to some plain, boring, or straight up bad movies, Cuba Gooding Jr. being the prime example, though it seems like Jamie Foxx has been wavering in the this territory by mostly focusing on crime or war movies like “Stealth” (2005), “Jarhead” (2005) or most recently Peter Berg’s “The Kingdom” (2007). Foxx plays Special Agent Ronald Fleury, an FBI Agent trying to investigate a recent bombing at a United States Oil Company’s compound in Saudi Arabia by master terrorist Abu Hamza (Hezi Saddik). After trying to overcome some bureaucratic red tape that would prevent FBI investigation on Saudi soil, Fleury along with his team of three agents manage to get permission to discretely enter the country to try and investigate the bombings. Upon arrival they realize that they aren’t able to get into the investigation as planned as they are put under the close watch of Colonel Faris Al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom) who acts as their security protection and attaché for the duration of their stay. After a meeting with the local Prince they are allowed to act in the investigation which has been placed under Colonel Al-Ghazi’s command. With the investigation in full effect, Fleury and his crew start growing closer to Abu Hamza’s trail, figuring out how the bombing went down and attempting to follow the trail all the way back to the terrorist group’s leaders. Basically the story follows standard investigation plot points. Team arrives on the scene. Team looks for evidence, then has trouble finding evidence, then finds crucial evidence to lead them to the climax of the film. There’s some attempted spin at the whole ordeal by placing the film in Saudi Arabia, which at one point Chris Cooper’s character compares to mars, but even this less typical location doesn’t up the excitement. The story tends to meander through the film, moving slowly through the complications as Foxx tries to act intense the entire time, even though that doesn’t add energy to the film. For the most part the rest of the cast is the same, they play more towards their usual roles, Jennifer Garner plays the smart yet tough woman, Chris Cooper plays old and cynical, Jason Bateman plays comedy. Barhom does a fairly good job at keeping his character realistic as the only main Saudi character in the film, making his character a real person rather than just a Middle Eastern stereotype, though the film seems conflicted over whether or not it wants us to empathize with the character or just get caught up in the investigation. Berg’s directing seems ill equipped to deal with the slower and attemptedly thoughtful pace of the film’s writing as he goes handheld throughout the entirety of the movie, keeping al the little shakes and bumps that are typically used to add intensity to the film. Instead it just gets a bit frustrating as a character tries to deliver a slow and steady monologue to the film, or talk through some sequence (and there’s a lot of talking). Overall it’s a slow film that delves too far into FBI investigations and bureaucracy than I find entertaining, getting to some action sequences at the end that almost feel intense for the sake of being intense rather than flowing naturally from the film. There’s a strong cast of actors who I’ve liked in other things, but here they seem to just drag their feet along with the script and try to make the film more than it really is. While trying to explore tensions between Middle Eastern and the United States, the film doesn’t really go into depth in the area or the characters other than one character who maybe gets 10 to 15 minutes of coverage as a real person with a family, as opposed to the terrorists who seem to take up the entirety of the film. At times it seems as if the film intends to complicate the issues but just makes nearly all Saudis appear opportunistic at best when dealing with American forces. In the end though, the film just sort of floats through the investigation, trying to push the intensity to a film that just never piques my interest.
Video
The film is presented in 1080p 24/fps in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio with a VC-1 encoding that has been transferred well and keeps a lot of the clarity to the film. Since the film takes place in Saudi Arabia it keeps to most of the depictions that have shown up on film in terms of landscape, bright and very sepia/tan color tones of the environment, but it all comes through very clearly and cleanly as you would expect with blu-ray.
Audio
Presented with an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track in 48kHz/24-bit, there are also optional French and Spanish DTS 5.1 tracks. The film does a good job with the sound, all of the levels come through clearly and Danny Elfman’s score works with the film, though doesn’t help to up the pace or get me more engaged. Of course there are explosions and lots of background noises that move well through the film and everything comes through with the right amount of clarity. English for the hearing impaired, French and Spanish subtitles.
Extras
The single blu-ray disc comes with a fair amount of special features including 3 deleted scenes, an interactive timeline, several featurettes, an audio commentary track and various ‘U-control’ interactive features. First up is the audio commentary with director Peter Berg which mostly talks about the heat of the various locations they’re filming in, talks about how funny Jason Bateman is, as well as dealing with some of the technical aspects of the film. There are a lot of awkward pauses that Berg will just watch the movie, then jump in with a comment about the heat, repeat what’s going on in the film, or occasionally provide an interesting behind the scenes fact. Not a particularly engaging commentary, though there are a few interesting points scattered in with the silence. Next are the 3 deleted scenes which aren’t separated out and run as a chunk for 11 minutes and 6 seconds. First Fleury visits Agent Manner’s family in the states, approximately 1 minute and 45 seconds. Fleury talks with his boss at the FBI along with Agent Mayes, about 7 minutes and 10 seconds. And third is an extended section with some additional cuts of the final fight inside the apartment complex, which lasts about 2 minutes and 11 seconds. “Constructing the Freeway Sequence” runs for 18 minutes and 18 seconds. This featurette covers the freeway fight at the end of the film, going from pre-visualization of the scene along with the stunts and acting that went into the film including on-set footage and interviews, the CG storyboarding. An interesting featurette in terms of showing how blocking such a major scene goes down in terms of effects, stunts and directing. Next up is “Creating ‘The Kingdom’” which basically acts as a long making-of featurette that can be played all together for 35 minutes and 35 seconds, or broken down into segments described below: - “Obligation to Authenticity” runs for 7 minutes and 17 seconds. This segment mostly deals with Berg talking about the inspiration for the film and the ideas behind the film itself, including a good amount of behind-the-scenes footage of Berg directing along with interviews with Michael Mann and Berg. - “Fire in the Hole” runs for 2 minutes and 26 seconds, which looks at the FBI’s involvement in the film, bringing the cast and crew out to an FBI bombmaking school, showing what they learned and heard about there along with cast and crew interviews about what they were shown. - “Simple Ballistic issues” runs for 4 minutes and 15 seconds. Here Berg puts his primary actors through a loose combat drill in training them how to properly fire and hold weapons, including some paintball on set training, and of course some goofing around. - “Building a Kingdom” runs for 6 minutes and 16 seconds and deals with the set design and the giant set they built to make Arizona double for Saudi Arabia. A nice look at the production design behind the film and the immense amount of production design that went into the outdoors part of the final fight. - “On Locaton in Abu Dhabi” runs for 3 minutes and 30 seconds. This section focuses mostly on the on location filming in Abu Dhabi, again using behind the scenes shooting as well as actor interviews. Almost everyone talks about the heat for the most part, including Bateman’s problem with exhaustion. - “King Style” runs for 3 minutes and 9 seconds, which focuses on Berg’s style of directing, using three cameras and focusing more on improvisation and hand held filming rather than steadycams or blocking. A good deal of praise is heaped on berg, with some additional behind-the-scenes footage (which at times feels steadier than the hand held shots in the film itself). - “Foreign Relations” runs for 4 minutes and 37 seconds. Here the clip focuses on Barhom and the other actors that aren’t native English speakers, looking at their relationships with the other actors behind-the-scenes and their work on the film itself. - “Friendship” runs for 4 minutes and 2 seconds. In the final segment of the series of featurettes focuses on the relationship between Foxx and Barhom’s characters in the film, talking with producers and actors about the characterization of the two people from different regions and organizations. “History of the Kingdom” is an interactive timeline and is basically what it says it is, working as an interactive feature ranging from 1932 up into the present with pop-up summaries of different major events concerning Saudi Arabia and it’s relationship with other nations, especially the United States. An interesting feature considering the material, though it’s a little slow moving and much of the information could be more easily accessed online, though it’s a thoughtful addition. “The Mission Dossier: Surveillance” are a collection of the pre-visualizations put together to help map out the choreography of the major action sequences, as briefly mentioned during the making-of, as well as some statistical information pertinent to different segments of the film which are shown side by side. All of these are broken down into different sections described below: - “Introduction” runs for 42 seconds, this segment covers simply the opening sequence of the film before the initial attack, providing information on Saudi Arabia. - “Attack Part 1” runs for 1 minute and 1 second, this segment covers the initial attack and the car chase at the beginning of the film. - “Attack Part 2” runs for 26 seconds, which covers the suicide bombing briefly. - “Freeway Ambush” runs for 1 minute and 17 seconds, going through the different segments of the car crashes and the explosions going on the freeway, highlighting different elements of the chase sequence. - “Firefight” runs for 1 minute and 5 seconds and goes through the external fight in the apartments area at the end of the film. - “Search” runs for 1 minute and 44 seconds, closing out the group with a mapping of the final search through the apartment complex that closes out the film. Finally are a collection of “U-Control” interactive features for profile 1.1 players or greater, which are basically a conglomeration of the other featurettes already available, but watchable during the film itself. They aren’t available on every scene, but it’s an interesting way of providing special features in context: “The Mission Dossier” feature allows the viewer to access text information during the film, dealing with everything from the FBI to the Saudi Government and fictional investigation notes related o the investigation within the film. This feature is not available in every scene, but simply allows the viewer to read up on information dealing with the film while the film is playing. - “The Mission Dossier: Surveillance” features are the CG storyboards that I’ve already mentioned, but only available on the affiliated scenes. - “Character by Character: The Apartment Shootout” brings up a selection between the four major events, happening with each of the four major agents at the time of the final apartment shootout. It’s a cool way to jump around the action, but goes by fairly quickly and would have made more sense as a picture in picture featurette or something similar. - Finally is the “Picture in Picture” video commentary, which brings up a picture in picture pop-up window that provides behind-the-scenes footage for the different scenes, most of which gets encapsulated and used in the “Making the Kingdom” series of featurettes, though it’s a clever way to present the special features in context with the film itself.
Overall
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