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My Kingdom review here.

A couple of things I left out.

The one part that I thought might be offensive to Saudis is Chris Cooper’s character’s condescending attitude when explaining to the Saudi police officers the proper way to handle a crime scene. Now, this is based in part on the assumption that the Saudi police force is competent enough to handle that sort of thing and doesn’t really need Chris Cooper’s help, thank you very much. Given the wide range of competence in police forces around the world (and especially in the U.S.), that’s not necessarily the correct assumption.

I’m not sure how to determine the accuracy of that assumption aside from eyewitness accounts, which aren’t exactly in abundance. So, my assumption as a screenwriter is to give the screenwriter the benefit of the doubt that he’s done his due diligence (and I have at least heard that Matthew Michael Carnahan did a helluva lot of research on the region and specifically terrorist activity there) and the depiction is sound.

On the other hand, the wide range of competence in screenwriters is pretty much the same as the wide range of competence in police forces so, we’re back where we started.

Also kind of annoying, Jennifer Garner’s character. I understand she probably didn’t want to play a riff on Syndey Bristow, but this is so far in the other direction that her character can seem kind of, well, unrealistically wussy.

And, as I mentioned in my review, the chain of evidence wouldn’t stand up on CSI. But what brings me back to the film is its ability to take all these disparate parts - the police procedural, the buddy cop film, the political drama, the action film - and while not doing any single one of them well (except the action film), bring them together to create something new that’s excellent.

And, finally, the Munich-ness of it; the devotion to the cyclical futility of violence of it sells it and sets it apart as a film of any one of these genres. For that part you’ll have to see the film to really know what I mean.

On the other hand, as of this writing, about half of the critics out there who did see it weren’t impressed.