THE KINGDOM — ** — Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner; with English subtitles (Middle Eastern dialects); rated R (violence, profanity, gore, torture, vulgarity, slurs)

"The Kingdom" spends its first 80 or so minutes building to what seems like it's going to be a killer ending. But instead we get a 30-minute blur of incomprehensible, over-the-top violent action that almost appears to have been directed by Michael Bay or one of his directing knock-offs.

The film also ends on a wrong-headed, jingoistic note. Which isn't to say that a movie can't get away with a rah-rah ending these days. But this one makes the whole movie feel like it was designed to be a nearly two-hour counterpoint to the nightly news.

Jamie Foxx stars as FBI special agent Ronald Fleury. He and his fellow agents (Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) are seeking approval to investigate a compound bombing in Saudi Arabia, a terrorist act that also killed one of their own (Kyle Chandler).

But when Fleury and the others get to the Middle East, they find they have to take a back seat to the Saudi investigators. Worse, the terrorist cell responsible for the bombing is aware of the Americans' presence and has targeted them for assassination.

At first it appears that director Peter Berg's thriller is going to depict a few of the Saudis — in particular, Ashraf Barhom's sympathetic colonel character — as being at least as heroic as the Americans. But then Matthew Carnahan's script quickly changes and turns Foxx and the others into modern-day John Waynes. (The similarities between this movie and the even more heavy-handed 1968 Wayne vehicle "The Green Berets" are many.)

Still, the first-rate cast is good. Veteran character actor Cooper gets to be an action star for a change, and Bateman's dry wisecracks come as welcome relief to all the seriousness.

"The Kingdom" is rated R for strong scenes of violent action (shootings, stabbings, beatings, explosive and vehicular mayhem, and violence against women), strong sexual language (profanity, crude slang terms and other suggestive talk), bloody, graphic gore, a scene of torture and interrogation, and slurs based on ethnicity and nationality. Running time: 110 minutes.

---

E-mail: jeff@desnews.com