Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The Kingdom (2007): The best movie of the year?

Director Peter Berg's latest effort, The Kingdom, is a high-intensity action drama that succeeds on all levels. And by that, I mean it blows away most of the competition as being one of the year's best so far. The film, about an FBI team who goes to Saudi Arabia to find out who is behind a devastating terrorist attack, boasts a star-studded cast and gritty imagery throughout. It also marks another large cinematic jump for director Peter Berg, who shows he has improved mightily from the less-than-stellar Very Bad Things less than ten years ago.

Berg's visuals are a feast for the viewers' eyes. The handheld camera work, which has proven to be a successful style in films such as Babel and Syriana, never distracts from the action. Particularly, the visual direction in the film's non-stop 30-minute concluding sequence will leave you with your mouth open. Easily, the sequence has some of the most engaging shootout action since Black Hawk Down.

Read the full The Kingdom movie review.

2 comments:

Matt said...

The many previews for The Kingdom had been throwing me for a loop. Sometimes it looked like a drama with occasional action bits and at other times it looked like Rambo had invaded Saudi Arabia. It sounds like it's actually somewhere in the middle of the two, which is exactly where I was hoping it'd be. I'll probably check this one out in the next couple of days.

Anonymous said...

Jamie Fox is always talking and bragging about something, here what he said this time… something about his “Kingdom,” whatever that means. http://www.kiisfm.com/cc-common/losangeles/podcast/onair.html