The Kingdom is a 2007 film directed by Peter Berg and starring Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, Ashraf Barhom, with Kyle Chandler, Jeremy Piven and Ali Suliman.
The film is fictional, but inspired by bombings at the Riyadh compound on May 12, 2003 and the Khobar housing complex on June 26, 1996 in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The story follows a team of FBI agents who are sent to investigate the bombing of a foreign-workers facility. Screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan has summarized the plot as "What would a murder investigation look like on Mars?” .
The film was screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival as its yearly 'Surprise Movie' on 22 August 2007. The film has been rated R by the MPAA for "Intense Sequences of Graphic Brutal Violence and Language". It received ratings of MA15+ in Australia and 15 in the United Kingdom.
When a terrorist bomb detonates inside a Western housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, an international incident is ignited. While diplomats slowly debate equations of territorialism, FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury quickly assembles an elite team and negotiates a secret five-day trip into Saudi Arabia to locate the madman behind the bombing. Upon landing in the desert kingdom, however, Fleury and his team discover Saudi authorities suspicious and unwelcoming of American interlopers into what they consider a local matter. Hamstrung by protocol-and with the clock ticking on their five days-the FBI agents find their expertise worthless without the trust of their Saudi counterparts, who want to locate the terrorist in their homeland on their own terms. Fleury's crew finds a like-minded partner in Saudi Colonel Al-Ghazi, who helps them navigate royal politics and unlock the secrets of the crime scene and the workings of an extremist cell bent on further destruction. With these unlikely allies sharing a propulsive commitment to crack the case, the team is led to the killer's front door in a blistering do-or-die confrontation. Now in a fight for their own lives, strangers united by one mission won't stop until justice is found in The Kingdom. Written by Universal Pictures
