I liked it, actually. The plot was so-so, and the story about how the FBI people got there wasn't very believable at all. But it was a good loud action thriller all the way through, and for what it's worth, the setting seemed reasonably Saudi to me, who've never had the chance to visit. The end scene was a bit cheesy though.

Dear DW,

I saw it here in Beirut, where it didn't really pull in crowds.

The Arabic was not bad, they even tried Saudi dialect ("Weesh" for "what"). Using the Emirates Palace Hotel as a Saudi palace was not bad - what are they gonna do if they can't film in KSA? The ending WAS cheesy, but that was to be expected. However, I was quite impressed by the juxtaposition of the "We'll kill them all" as said by both sides. I had not expected that level of sophistication and self-reflection.

Of course, there were quite a few dumb mistakes that the Saudi consultants (yes, there were some) probably wanted to have changed but the "movie people" wanted to keep. My Saudi friends, however, pointed at them when they said that the movie "sucked":

#1 Having a baby-face as what amounts to either the Minister of the Interior or the Governor of Riyadh. No young person would ever have that amount of power and all the major posts are held by very old people.

#2 Portraying KSA as a place where Westerners are not safe outside the compounds. (My friends & I here in Beirut have the same gripe about the portrayal/perception of Lebanon. If I had a dime for every time someone asks me "But, is it safe?" And Lebanon actually IS much more dangerous than KSA.)

#3 Portraying Riyadh/KSA as having "bad neighborhoods" a la South Central Los Angeles.

#4 The whole "FBI agent blackmails KSA ambassador into letting the team into Riyadh/KSA without telling anyone else in the US government"

#5 Portrayal of the State Department as wusses - particularly compared to Condi's real life performances.

In the end, since my expectations were very low I thought that the movie wasn't too bad.

--MSK*

I watched the movie opening weekend in the states, and oddly it wasn't packed. I agree with most of the comments made above, and the saudis i watched it with made the same comments as your friends MSK*. However, I had issue with point 3 (which they also made), since if Riyadh is like any other city in the world, it will have bad neighborhoods (maybe not as bad as in the movie, but it will be bad). The reason they would not be aware of it is because they're from the upper echelons of saudi society.

However, it was entertaining nonetheless.

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MSK/M.-

I haven't seen the movie so I don't know what was portrayed, but Riyadh does have "bad" neighbourhoods. See here.
They are generally old and derelict, what with most development being restricted to the north of the city (where various princes live).
The majority of inhabitants are immigrants or low to middle class natives.
I wouldn't say that crime is 'rife' there, but it is certainly higher than other parts of the city.

Well, crime wasn't really the problem in the movie. In The Kingdom, "bad neighbourhood" meant that dozens of masked jihadists with machine guns will pop up like cardboard targets along the rooftops as soon as the infidels enter...

Dear M & Ali K,

I'm going with alle & my Saudi friends here: While Riyadh has districts like al-Suwaydi, there are no gang-ridden HLM/SouthBronx/favela-type neighborhoods where a police officer would say "We should not be here!" and the Ibn-Taymiyah-Street militia shoots with AK47 and RPGs at "intruders".

It's not about "normal crime" but about anti-Western, anti-"Westernized establishment" militants.

As far as I know, the only country in the whole region where such neighborhoods exist is Iraq ... Even in the Beiruti southern suburbs (the famous "Dahiyeh"), if a police car with American FBI agents were to drive in, the Hizbullahis would stop them & might pull out their guns, but would certainly not start shooting lest shot at first.

--MSK*

MSK-

I haven't seen the movie, but if that was what was portrayed then yes, that sort of thing doesn't exist in Riyadh or anywhere in Saudi for that matter.

Haven't been in Saudi for quite some time, so obviously I can't judge what the neighborhoods are like. However, it seems that in the 90's (I think the date is around '95, but I forget) there was an incident like in the movie - at that time though the police wasn't as well trained as they are now.

I lived in Jeddah in 2004-2005, and knew all too well that some people didn't like Westerners, but was also pressingly aware that I lived in a police state, so that the only person willing to attempt violence against civilian westerners (or anyone besides Saudi family and their protectors, actually, using force) had to be *ferociously committed* and willing to die, something only a minority of the angry ranters are willing to do.

On a side note, I do remember a rather articulate student saying to me: "Teacher, we have no hope get jobs, even once we finish studying here, and don't look forward to careers. We sit at home, watching tv 8-10 hours a day, watching al-jazeerah and al-manar, seeing our arab and muslim brothers and sisters being slaughtered in Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia and Iraq. Then we go to the mosque and listen to the imam tell us to die for our religion. I'm surprised that there haven't been more 9-11s." (wallah, I may be paraphrasing, but those are basically his words)...

on the other hand, when I think of bad neighbourhoods, I think of heroin, poverty, and ignorance; not AK-47s and militias, even though I know those weapons exist, in fact, I have been told by many Saudis that practically every household has a rifle in it. Not too different from the US in that regard, along with the paranoia. Rather minimal security in a lot of places I've been too, and I always lived off of the compounds...

I watched this film last night and thought it was....so-so, not great, even if it didn't resort to very many obvious cliches about A-rabs. I found the jerky fast-moving hand-held camera approach extremely distracting, so perhaps that was part of it. Absolutely hated the flash-card three-minute history lesson in the beginning. It was interesting to see the portrayal of the Good Arab in the form of Col. Fares, particularly the American pop culture references (he watches the Hulk, and is therefore humanised), and the ways in which the film affirmed post 9/11 American popular wisdom about Saudi and other Dangerous Muslim Societies and terrorism in general - the excess of oil money, nothing for youth to do, Islamist sympathisers in the military (hinted at by the fact that the baddies were able to get uniforms), the rich Arabs who don't want to get their hands dirty and have no idea how to conduct a basic investigation or what a "clue" is, the value of straight-talking FBI professionals over wishy-washy diplomats and politicians. I thought the final juxtaposition was pretty sophisticated too, but the rest of the film never really rose above the formulaic.