this was rubbish.
maybe it would have been an okay mini-series, but it tried to do way too much.
anyway 'the kingdom' isn't great but it is at least a film. don't think 'syriana' is really more intelligent either. it's just that clooney talks a good game and has earned liberal credentials for saying that mccarthy was a bad dude.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, 7 October 2007 13:36 (sixteen years ago) link
the kingdom was one of the worst movies i ever seen
― jhøshea, Sunday, 7 October 2007 13:45 (sixteen years ago) link
reading upthread 1) make it a miniseries is a meme already 2) the corruption speech is good.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, 7 October 2007 13:48 (sixteen years ago) link
I thought it was good. It was almost exactly the same film as Any Given Sunday in many ways. Matt Damon was the best thing in it. Weirdly.
― I know, right?, Sunday, 7 October 2007 14:09 (sixteen years ago) link
better than traffic
― omar little, Sunday, 7 October 2007 17:01 (sixteen years ago) link
syriana was great. traffic and the kingdom sucked balls bigtime.
― jhøshea, Sunday, 7 October 2007 17:21 (sixteen years ago) link
traffic is bad but at least made an effort at characterization. it had a complex plot but ideas-wise it wasn't that complicated.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, 7 October 2007 17:33 (sixteen years ago) link
it had convenient color-coding
― jhøshea, Sunday, 7 October 2007 17:41 (sixteen years ago) link
in this film the doctor from deep space nine gets blowed up
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 7 October 2007 18:20 (sixteen years ago) link
with a doctor from ER
who previously teamed up with the country singer in a movie about odysseus
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 7 October 2007 18:21 (sixteen years ago) link
while the kid from GWH watches his family implode
― El Tomboto, Sunday, 7 October 2007 18:22 (sixteen years ago) link
and america runs on gas
the end
Syriana has neither Benicio del Toro bargaining with the feds while floating in a pool, nor teenage crackheads - ergo it cannot be superior to Traffic in any way.
The Kingdom would have been a lot better had it been an actual Michael Mann film instead of trying to be intelligent and CSI-y. Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper runnin' and gunnin' through Saudi Arabia would have been enough.
― milo z, Sunday, 7 October 2007 18:42 (sixteen years ago) link
Chris Cooper is criminally underused, actually. Both of his awesome lines are in the trailer. Fuck that.
― milo z, Sunday, 7 October 2007 18:43 (sixteen years ago) link
if they'd shot 'the kingdom' like 'miami vice' and had more terseness i'd be happy as larry, fuck the politics.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, 7 October 2007 19:26 (sixteen years ago) link
the actual investigationy bits were pretty weak. and i couldn't work out if the bad guys at the end were in cahoots with the national guard guy all along etc, which wouldn't have mattered if it'd been more like 'heat'.
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Sunday, 7 October 2007 19:27 (sixteen years ago) link
i liked syriana more than traffic -- which is a seriously bad film -- but they both pretend to be way smarter and tougher than they are. the dumbest thing in syriana is the very end, where we're still presented with this all-powerful (if, you know, deeply flawed and corrupt) america, in which flinty dudes in washington can nail anyone anywhere with the flick of a switch, and watch the carnage on big-screen tvs. (i also hate movies where they kill off a kid for no good reason except to up the emotional ante.)
― tipsy mothra, Sunday, 7 October 2007 23:40 (sixteen years ago) link
syriana doesn't have a white girl's sleeping with a black guy as being the key "rock bottom moment" so i'm gonna go with my og pick
― omar little, Monday, 8 October 2007 04:24 (sixteen years ago) link
i also hate movies where they kill off a kid for no good reason except to up the emotional ante
the kid's death is a pretty major plot point as it provides a reason for prince nasir to hire matt damon
― max, Monday, 8 October 2007 06:31 (sixteen years ago) link
this movie was all hat and no cattle. at times it felt like it was being shot and edited by a film student -- there were striking shots but then some real clunky ones (i.e. FEET running UP THE STAIRS); even that set-piece speech about corruption was ruined by OCD editing and weirdo jerky off-center framing. when so little is trying to communicate so much, with so little connective expository tissue, please let us just concentrate on the characters and what they're getting across.
anyway i agree that a whole movie about the pakistani kids would have been 1,000,000,000,000,000 times better.
― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 22 November 2007 03:30 (sixteen years ago) link
come on, it wouldn't really have been a quadrillion times better. maybe just a little.
i thought the dude from star trek did a good job.
― mookieproof, Thursday, 22 November 2007 04:11 (sixteen years ago) link
If anything, this is better a decade later.
― with HD lyrics (Eazy), Monday, 23 March 2015 05:46 (nine years ago) link
ISIS, wealth stratification, all here.
― with HD lyrics (Eazy), Monday, 23 March 2015 05:48 (nine years ago) link
found this movie Bad
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 7 August 2016 01:56 (seven years ago) link
i liked it much better the second time. more than traffic, anyhow.
― brimstead, Sunday, 7 August 2016 01:58 (seven years ago) link
less racist or trite than Traffic but also less pretty & purposeful. Character arcs in Traffic make sense. motivations here are just confused.
i dont need a film to tell me american imperialism will steamroll the lives of good people, id like to understand how ppl respond to that experience & apparently the answer is like, wave a white shirt & forget about how important your family is for a little while . . . . so many loose ends that dont really relate to anything else & so they just kill half the cast at the end to tie it up idk not into it
― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Sunday, 7 August 2016 01:59 (seven years ago) link
I learned one important message from this very shite movie; put an RCBO on the swimming pool lighting circuit dude.
― calzino, Sunday, 7 August 2016 09:51 (seven years ago) link
Thought about watching this tonight, thinking I never saw it. Decided to check ilx to see what folks thought. Evidently, 4.5 years ago I did see it, and hated it! Good to know. A little worried about my brain health
― ILX’s bad boy (D-40), Tuesday, 13 April 2021 08:48 (three years ago) link