As the summer winds down, so do the summer blockbusters and more serious movies start to surface; like this one. This movie dealt with the complexities of the Saudi Arabia situation through a fictional incident (maybe) under our current circumstances. Jamie Foxx plays an FBI operations director who decides to investigate an attack on an American Army base in Saudi Arabia that kills 100 Americans. After going through some political red tape and being denied, he basically blackmails an Arabian Prince into letting him, Jennifer Gardner, Jason Bateman a couple of others go over into Saudi as "guests" where he partners up with a Saudi police chief to look for "Abu Hazma", an international terrorist who is believed to be responsible for the incident. While still being slightly biased, its the first movie that I've seen that actually attempted to show people the political quagmire between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia and all of the politics involved and how that plays out when dealing with them. It also attempted to show how "terrorists" live amongst the citizens and how difficult it is to flush them out. Since this is directed by a Jew - Peter Berg - you have to expect some bias but this movie does not paint a blanket picture that all Saudis are "evil" and "out to get us." It does drive home clear the notion that our problems are not just in Iraq but throughout the Middleeast. Anyway, Jamie, Jenny and Jason along with this other cat (I don't know his name) proceed to figure out how the attack was carried out (each are specialists in different fields) and uncover clues that lead them to Abu Hazma. Jamie then hooks up with the police captain and attempts to track his ass down. It was done tastefully. There was no old school style Stallone/Swarzenegro type shit of going in gung-ho and blasting mofos on some 2 against 200 shit. They followed procedure until they get attacked themselves and end up "in the shit" after one of their own gets captured - then the runnin' and gunnin' jumps off! Come on, now! This is an American movie. You know some shit has to go down, right?
Constant scene stealer Jeremy Piven pops up as a diplomat who's consistently trying to get the four to abandon the secret investigation and come back to the States. As always, he's himself and as always, he steals the show. One thing that this film did was to paint the picture that many people in Saudi live in distrust of each other and everyone is walking on eggshells. I'm not sure if that's true or not but at least this movie attempted to address the subtleties of the lifestyle if only just a little bit. What it didn't address is the U.S.'s responsibility in the sensitive nature of the relationship between Saudi and here. I hate that. They use the same tactics when they address the rest of the world about black America. "I have no idea why they are mad at us" seems to be the universal answer. All in all, this was a good movie. Going into it and not having seen a trailer for it, I thought it was a war movie and I don't really like war movies so my interest was thin. Its not. It uses an incident to paint a broad view of the political sensitivities between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It didn't help the government spread propaganda about Iraq; that I'm glad of because if it had, I might have walked out. I still think American movies need to move completely away from that its us against them mentality even if they sometimes say "they're not all bad" because they are no more guilty than we are of international crimes. Let me stop. This movie is a good story with a couple of sad moments and ends with a strong message. If it gets a nomination for an awards, I won't be surprised. Big ups to Jamie Foxx on this one.
Constant scene stealer Jeremy Piven pops up as a diplomat who's consistently trying to get the four to abandon the secret investigation and come back to the States. As always, he's himself and as always, he steals the show. One thing that this film did was to paint the picture that many people in Saudi live in distrust of each other and everyone is walking on eggshells. I'm not sure if that's true or not but at least this movie attempted to address the subtleties of the lifestyle if only just a little bit. What it didn't address is the U.S.'s responsibility in the sensitive nature of the relationship between Saudi and here. I hate that. They use the same tactics when they address the rest of the world about black America. "I have no idea why they are mad at us" seems to be the universal answer. All in all, this was a good movie. Going into it and not having seen a trailer for it, I thought it was a war movie and I don't really like war movies so my interest was thin. Its not. It uses an incident to paint a broad view of the political sensitivities between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. It didn't help the government spread propaganda about Iraq; that I'm glad of because if it had, I might have walked out. I still think American movies need to move completely away from that its us against them mentality even if they sometimes say "they're not all bad" because they are no more guilty than we are of international crimes. Let me stop. This movie is a good story with a couple of sad moments and ends with a strong message. If it gets a nomination for an awards, I won't be surprised. Big ups to Jamie Foxx on this one.
