The Art of War
Watching The Kingdom’s (JJJJ) opening-credits sequence, which lays out a timeline of our country’s complex relationships in the Middle East, you can’t help but wonder whether there’s going to be a quiz on this later. But you’ll soon forget all that stuff: The next half hour is filled with the guns-a-blazin’, cars-explodin’ set pieces that normally scream neocon fantasy rather than thoughtful analysis. Terrorists have blown up an oil-company compound in Saudi Arabia, and a group of badass feds, led by Jamie Foxx and Alias hottie Jennifer Garner, go over there to find out whodunit and dish out some homegrown justice. “America’s not perfect,” Foxx’s character says early on, “but we are good at this” — meaning, one assumes, kicking ass and taking names. It’s simple: We’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys, and it’s time to teach the bad guys a lesson. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!Except then The Kingdom’s tone shifts again, and it turns out that’s not what this film is about at all. There’s certainly more ballistic mayhem to come — a well-choreographed bloodbath on a Riyadh street takes up most of the movie’s third act — but you won’t find much in the way of blind jingoism here. Instead, director Peter Berg crafts a smart FBI procedural that mixes sophisticated ideas about the situation in the Middle East with the big-budget spectacle. It’s less like a summer blockbuster and more like an adrenalized Syriana.
Like Berg’s transcendent 2004 high school football movie Friday Night Lights, The Kingdom fills unexpected layers of mood with a drony sound track and makes room for an ensemble cast to add character quirks, like the necktie expertise demonstrated by Chris Cooper’s agent character. However, it’s the tone of moral ambivalence about our country’s notions of “payback” that truly sets this film apart. Anybody can make things go boom in the desert. A revenge flick that has shades of gray and forces you to reassess the War on Terror is far more impressive.
Like The Kingdom, the indie films Right at Your Door (JJ1/2) and The Nines (JJ) both aim for something more than your average kiss-kiss-bang-bang fare. Unfortunately, neither of them succeeds, despite starting off with intriguing premises — Right at Your Door imagines a what-if scenario in which Los Angeles is hit by a dirty bomb, while The Nines consists of a trio of short stories about three people stuck in a really rubbery reality. Both trip themselves up in their own devices before they reach their endgame. In Right at Your Door’s case, a fascinating idea about domestic disaster on the left coast soon becomes a showcase for over-emoting and some ham-fisted symbolism (gosh, that quarantine tent sure does look like an American flag!). Newbie director Chris Gorak knows how to build paranoid tension, but he hasn’t yet figured out how to make it pay off dramatically. As for director John August’s strung-together triptych, you get the feeling that a) his ambitions exceed his grasp, and b) his star Ryan Reynolds couldn’t act his way out of a sack with a Google map. The Nines’s cryptic WTF connections are enough to hold your interest for a while. But when you actually start getting answers, the whole thing turns utterly ridiculous.
But what if I want mindless entertainment, you ask? Well, there’s The Brothers Solomon (JJ1/2), which feels custom-made for people who consider Dumb and Dumber the epitome of modern screen comedy. Arrested Development’s Will Arnett and Saturday Night Live’s Will Forte play dim-witted siblings who want to honor their terminally ill dad’s wish for a grandchild. The only problem is neither of them has had a date in decades. An abundance of jokes on how monumentally moronic these guys are ensues. There’s a great gag involving a lengthy sky banner that almost makes up for the large amount of dud punch lines, but considering the level of talent involved — The Office’s Jenna Fischer, SNL’s Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader costar, and Mr. Show’s Bob Odenkirk directs — this should have been hilarious, instead of merely amusing.
Those looking for laughs would be better off with Wristcutters: A Love Story (JJJ1/2), a low-budget comedy about suicide victims (no, really, it’s sweet and funny) that’s content to turn a high concept into modest gallows humor. After he kills himself, a gloomy Gus played by Almost Famous’s Patrick Fugit finds out the hard way that the afterlife is just like this world, only a lot more run-down and shabby. So he decides to go on a road trip with another lost soul (Shannyn Sossamon) in search of a second chance on Earth. Guess who falls in love? Director Goran Dukic’s deader-than-deadpan rom-com actually makes a morbid subject seem oddly charming. Tom Waits plays God; we call that typecasting.
