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From Rendition to Redacted to In The Valley Of Elah, our cinemas will soon be awash with politically charged thrillers tackling the 'War on Terror' and America's role in the Middle East. The Kingdom, though, is something else: a bombastic actioner that sees an elite group of FBI agents hunt down the terrorist cell responsible for a suicide bombing in Riyadh. Simplistic in the extreme and riddled with clichés, the quality of its execution can't excuse the dubiousness of its premise.

After a ruthless raid on a western housing compound in Saudi Arabia leaves more than a hundred dead, Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) defies orders by flying in his team of investigators to work the crime scene. Initially hamstrung by official protocol and the intransigence of the local authorities, Fleury eventually wins over his handler, colonel Al Ghazi (Ashraf Barhom), as his fellow investigators - explosives expert Chris Cooper, forensics examiner Jennifer Garner and intelligence whizz Jason Bateman - identify the extremists behind the outrage. Unbeknownst to them, however, their prey are planning a lethal counter-attack that will put all their lives in danger...

"SYRIANA MEETS BLACK HAWK DOWN"

Deftly negotiating the complex practicalities of launching a murder enquiry in one of the most hostile countries on the planet, Peter Berg's engrossing film combines the detail of Syriana with a clashing-cultures motif redolent of Black Rain. By the end, though, it has morphed into Black Hawk Down, complete with a frenzied assault on a militant hide-out that wouldn't look out of place in Rambo IV.

The Kingdom is out in the UK on 5th October 2007.