Thrilling 'Kingdom' throws sand in the eyes of Saudi royalty

The high-octane political thriller "The Kingdom," opens with an epic attack on a community of American families living in a closed-off compound in Saudi Arabia: dozens of men, women and children brutally slaughtered by terrorists disguised as Saudi police.

When news of this outrage reaches the States, the FBI wants to go to the scene of the crime and investigate, but it turns out the bureau's hands are tied: The leaders of the oil-rich kingdom will not allow it, and our smarmy attorney general (Danny Huston) backs them up.

Fortunately, the bureau has an enterprising agent (Jamie Foxx) who won't take no for an answer, and he shrewdly blackmails the Saudi ambassador into getting permission for a small team of investigators to journey to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and see what it can find out.

Once there, however, the team members -- including a cynical old salt (Chris Cooper) and a sexy pathologist (Jennifer Garner) -- find their hands are still tied, their access to witnesses and evidence is restricted and every breath they take is monitored.

So the movie becomes a bitter conflict of cultures; a stumbling detective story that has the fish-out-of-water Americans trying to outsmart their authoritarian hosts and track down the terrorists, and a blazing action movie as their efforts leads to a crescendo of shootouts.

In the final analysis, actor-turned-director Peter Berg ("Friday Night Lights") is a lot more interested in action than politics -- his movie is a far cry from "Syriana" -- and its success as a thriller is compromised by a few credulity-stretching coincidences in the script.

But Foxx is magnetic in the lead, and the subplot in which he bonds with his Saudi police liaison (Ashraf Barhom, giving the movie's best performance) is touching. The movie also exudes an air of authenticity, even though much of it was shot in Arizona.

And while it stays well short of a daring political statement, it effectively hints in just about every frame that the U.S. partnership with this greedy, family-run nation of fundamentalist Muslims is a powder keg just waiting to explode.