You pretty much know what you’re going to get when you see Peter Berg’s name attached to a movie. The filmmaker can generally be found churning out mid-budget action thrillers, typically with a military element and usually starring Mark Wahlberg, although he has ventured into blockbuster territory before with the disappointing Will Smith superhero satire Hancock and Universal’s tedious Battleship.
The most underrated entry in Berg’s filmography is arguably the severely overlooked Dwayne Johnson actioner The Rundown, but among the more forgotten of his efforts is probably The Kingdom. The 2007 flick stars Jamie Foxx as a federal agent who is given the most important and also impossible sounding task of his entire career.
The Academy Award winner’s Ron Fleury has to assemble an elite team to infiltrate and destroy a Saudi Arabian terrorist cell, but his hastily assembled squad faces plenty of opposition from the locals as they scramble to complete their mission on time. The narrative is loosely based on real events but is still entirely fictional, and while some of the political subtext is a little too on the nose, the action sequences are impressively crafted and it remains entertaining throughout.
The Kingdom also boasts a top quality cast, with the rest of Foxx’s team played by the always reliable trio of Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman, while the ensemble is packed with recognizable character actors like Richard Jenkins, Kyle Chander and Danny Huston. The movie was far from a box office success after only earning $87 million against a $72 million budget and reviews were decidedly mixed, but it’s proving to be a hit with Netflix subscribers and is currently the eighth most popular title on the streaming service across the entire world.
