Trailer
Plot summary
Al-Qaeda terrorists detonate a bomb at a housing compound for an American oil company in Riyadh, killing American and Saudi citizens. A second blast kills Francis Manner, the FBI's legal attaché in Saudi Arabia. His colleague, Ronald Fleury, assembles a rapid deployment team: Janet Mayes, a forensic examiner; Adam Leavitt, an intelligence analyst; and Grant Sykes, a bomb technician. The Justice and State Departments resist, so Fleury presses the Saudi ambassador into allowing a five-day stay. In Riyadh, Colonel Faris Al Ghazi of the Saudi State Police and General Al Abdulmalik receive the agents; the general's inexperience slows the work, and Saudi officials treat the Americans as intruders in a local matter. At the palace of Prince Ahmed bin Khaled, Fleury argues that Al Ghazi should lead the inquiry, and the prince agrees, opening the crime scene to the team.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Kingdom (2007)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- While shooting The Kingdom on location in Mesa, Arizona, director Peter Berg was involved in a fatal accident: the SUV he was riding in collided with a John Deere Gator all-terrain vehicle driven by assistant property master Nick Papac, who died three hours later. Papac's parents later filed a lawsuit against the director, a driver and the production company.
- The Kingdom was banned in Kuwait, where an information ministry source told Agence France-Presse it was "a false depiction of facts," and in Bahrain, whose information ministry official said it broke censorship laws and "vilifies a brotherly country, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."
- The Kingdom's plot draws on three real attacks: the 1996 Khobar Towers housing complex bombing, the 2004 Khobar massacre, and the 2003 Riyadh compound bombings.
- The film, set in Saudi Arabia, was shot partly in Arizona, starting at the old Maricopa County Courthouse in Phoenix, with compound scenes at Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus in Mesa; some trailer frames show saguaro cacti not native to Saudi Arabia.
