There are a few things to be learned from viewing The Kingdom: Jennifer Garner needs to take some acting lessons, the entire movie looks and feels like a Michael Mann film, and the best aspect of the film is the profoundly moving performance of Ashraf Barhom, who plays the Saudi Police chief AlGhazi. For such a talented cast, the potential premise, and the $70 million budget, The Kingdom turns out to be a major disappointment.

The movie opens with a rather promising and insightful credit sequence that uses newsreel footage and title cards to chronicle the political history of Saudi Arabia from the 1900s to present day. The montage also explains the significance of oil and the country's diplomatic relationship with the United States. The first actually real shot of the movie takes place on an American housing compound, where a terrorist attack unfolds when a suicide bomber kills tens of oil-industry workers playing baseball. Then, the movie cuts to the diplomatic world of Washington D.C., where a group of professional FBI agents volunteer to travel to the crime scene in Saudi Arabia to investigate the bombing. The group is led by special agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), and the others include an explosives expert (Chris Cooper), a forensics analyst (Jennifer Garner) and an intelligence expert (Jason Bateman). Once they arrive, they are given five days to find the culprits, but a certain U.S. Embassy diplomat (Jeremy Piven) wants them to get out of there as soon as possible. The movies also delves into the world of Muslim extremists, the dynamics between the FBI director and the Attorney General, the role of the Saudi Arabian prince and the private lives of people who live in this part of the Middle East.

One of the most frustrating things about The Kingdom is how it shamelessly pretends to be something it is not. It thinks way too much of itself and takes itself excessively seriously, but is actually a just a sorry excuse to blow some stuff up and make cheap stereotypical jokes over and over again. The right ingredients are all there, but Peter Berg's film is blatantly manipulative and formulaic, it sure doesn't think much of its audience. So many flashbacks recall scenes that took place not even 20 minutes earlier, leaving one to think that the filmmakers obviously thought that their viewers would just easily forget them. What is even more pathetic is the fact that they think that their superbly staged action sequences can save the movie from its dramatic and artistic faults. Wrong.

Perhaps actor-turned-director Peter Berg is gradually improving. His previous works have included the dreadful Very Bad Things (1998), the mindless The Rundown (2003) and the inspiring Friday Night Lights (2004), his best work to date. The influences of filmmaker Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider, Collateral), such as the kinetic handheld camera, extreme closeups and quiet dialogue are apparent in The Kingdom more than anything. However, even the greatly orchestrated action scenes cannot save Berg's film from its eventual freefall. Foxx does his job admirably, the great character actor Chris Cooper is wasted in an insignificant role, Garner is annoying in entirety, and Piven and Bateman are so inexplicably miscast, that they forgot this is not Entourage and Arrested Development anymore. The Kingdom surprisingly ends on the right note, but the overall cinematic work is offbalance with little depth and complexity. In other words, Syriana (2005) for the unintelligent.