Written by Matthew Michael Carnahan, Peter Berg’s The Kingdom tells the story of a team of FBI crime-scene investigators sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate a terrorist attack on an American civilian compound for Western workers employed in the Kingdom. It has a compelling story, especially in light of America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, the film suffers from an identity crisis: It doesn’t know whether it wants to be a serious drama or a standard shoot-'em-up.

Special Agent Ronald Fluery (Jamie Foxx) is the leader of an FBI special-response team that is notified of a barbaric attack on a Western compound in Saudi Arabia in which hundreds of Americans are killed. Fluery and his FBI colleagues want to be on the scene to review the evidence and direct the investigation. However, the Saudis do not want American assistance, viewing the FBI presence on their soil as a loss of control over internal matters. The US Attorney General, Gideon Young (Danny Huston), is quite happy to let Saudi officials deal with the investigation by themselves, but Fluery uses knowledge of illegal Saudi activities to blackmail the Saudi ambassador and enable a small contingent of four FBI investigators to fly to Riyadh and participate in an assessment of the crime scene. The Saudi leaders, fearing for the safety of the investigators, entrust their safety to Colonel Al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), a high-ranking police official. But conflict erupts between the FBI team, which wants an active role in the investigation, and Col Al-Ghazi, who wants to restrict the team's access and ensure its safety. As Colonel Al-Ghazi and the American investigators develop respect for each other, an alliance forms, and the Saudis and FBI team hunt down the terrorists together.

Rather than developing into an intriguing crime-drama set in a foreign land, The Kingdom becomes more of a simple action film, with the crime-scene investigators turning into a paramilitary combat unit that takes on the terrorists in downtown Riyadh. Director Berg, using handheld cameras and documentary film footage, initially gives his film the feel of a docudrama, but Carnahan’s script has the FBI crime-scene investigators play it like a bunch of cowboys, not in keeping with the seriousness of the subject matter nor appropriate for the tone that Berg establishes early in his film. I also had problems with Jennifer Garner, who does not have the dramatic weight to carry off her role as Special Agent Janet Mayes, one of the professional crime-scene investigators. With her lips-forward performance, always pouting and accentuating her possibly collagen-enhanced kisser, she hardly seems credible.

Berg does stage some pretty good action sequences. The explosions and gunfire seem real; the damage caused during the terrorist attacks is quite frightening. I was never bored during The Kingdom, but I wanted more than just an action film. The small look that Berg gives us into Saudi culture -- a culture few of us truly understand -- is what makes this story interesting. With tighter editing and a rewrite of the central characters, Berg could have made a superb film. The Kingdom is entertaining, but it could have been so much more.

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