Peter Canavese
2007-12-21 21:12:00 UTC
As directed by Peter Berg, the action thriller The Kingdom layers banter over dread on the way to a blowout action finale. When the credits rolled, I had to wonder what hit me—the oddly paced procedural about a terrorist investigation in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia fails to engage in the political issues Berg promises with a whirlwind opening-credit history lesson. Where's the beef? Apparently, it's on the cutting room floor: forty minutes were cut shortly before the final version began screening for most critics. As a potboiler that puts Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman, as FBI agents, through the acting equivalent of wind sprints, The Kingdom functions, but despite a hasty, self-indicting capper, it also panders, its impact mostly based on satisfying revenge being meted out by Americans to foreign terrorists.
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In addition to the film's stunning audio-visual presentation, Universal serves up a special edition with everything you wanted to know about The Kingdom but were afraid to ask, starting with a garrulous screen-specific commentary by director Peter Berg. Eleven minutes of deleted scenes are included.
New on Blu-ray: "The Mission Dossier: Surveillance" (6:35 in six parts) enhances four major action sequences (the film-opening terrorist attack, the freeway ambush, firefight, and search) with picture-in-picture "briefings" and animated flyover "simulation footage" giving the bigger picture.
That feature is accessible from the Extras menu, but also the disc's U-Control menu. Universal's patented U-Control can be accessed either from its own top menu or on the fly during playback (with U-Control enabled). A Picture in Picture option offers behind-the-scenes and interview segments (such as one in which Berg explains how the film is intended to be taken not as jingoism, but as critical of violent extremism).
Mission Dossier superimposes text screens offering a Culture Guide (on subjects like "Country Facts," "Sadi Royal Family," "Virgins and Martyrs" "Salah," "Women in Saudi Arabia," and "Haram"), Intel (on subjects like "Westerners in Saudi Arabia," "FBI," "US/Saudi relations," "Bomb Craters," "Saudi National Guard," and "Suwaidi"), and Investigation Notes (as they might be taken on scene by the team)
U-Control also repurposes the DVD's "Character by Character: The Apartment Shootout" (13:41), which presents the film's climactic sequence from four re-assembled perspectives: Fleury & Al Ghazi, Janet Mayes, Adam Leavitt, and Sykes & Haytham. Last among the Blu-ray exclusives is My Scenes, which allows the viewer to bookmark favorite scenes.
The Blu-ray also includes all the rest of the DVD features. The in-depth "Constructing the Freeway Sequence" (18:18) includes comments by Berg, Foxx, Garner, Cooper, Bateman, stunt coordinator Keith Woulard, 2nd Unit director/stunt coordinator Phil Neilson, special effects coordinator Burt Dalton, remote control operator David Waine, remote control driver Tim Walkey, first assistant director/co-producer K.C. Hodenfield, camera car driver J. Armin Garza II, special effects technician David Greene, and actors Ali Suliman and Ashraf Barhoum. The featurette also lays out all five camera angles on the exploding Mercedes and subsequent crashes, the on-location rehearsal of the scene that follows, animated pre-visualization of the sequence, crash-test footage, and even the filmmakers using Matchbox cars to work out the details.
"Creating The Kingdom" (35:34), an eight-part documentary with a "Play All" feature, provides an all-access look at the film's production: "Obligation to Authenticity" (Berg's approach and the film's origins), "Fire in the Hole" (the cast and crew at FBI bomb school), "Simple Ballistic Issues" (actors on the gun range and in close-combat simulations), "Building a Kingdom" (the recreation of Suweidei in Mesa, Arizona), "On Location in Abu Dhabi" (focusing on the heat and humidity, which caused Bateman to take an unscheduled nap), "King Style" (Berg's technique, including constant rolling of three cameras and an affinity for improv), "Foreign Relations" (the integration of actors Barhoum and Suliman), and "Friendship" (the filmmakers' earnest message).
There's plenty of information and fun here, with comments by Berg, producers Michael Mann and Stuber, writer Carnahan, technical consultants Richard Klein and Ahmed al Ibrahim, Neilson, Dalton, Hodenfield, and actors Foxx, Cooper, Garner, Bateman, Barhoum, Piven, and Suliman. Lastly, echoing the film's title sequence, "History of The Kingdom: An Interactive Timeline" offers slides about 24 historic years (between 1932 and 2003) on the timeline of Saudi Arabia and its relations with the U.S.
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