By Daniel Fozzati

Saw IV

It is amazing what movies people will watch these days. The fact that the likes of “Saw IV” even receives an audience is troubling, yet it is still considered a film and therefore deserves, like all other movies, the benefit of critical thought.

Saw’s premise is simple enough: A calculating, disturbed mastermind continues the cyclical saga of brutal torture and killing as a method to teach his victims a lesson. According to this mastermind, everybody involved in his game has committed a horrible sin and must therefore be punished. Sins range from adultery and not cherishing one’s own life to being too selfless.

Weird and unjustified camera angles coupled with bulk orders of fake blood account for 95 percent of the movie’s screen time. The remaining five percent consists of shots of the victims listening to prerecorded tapes of the mastermind in which he speaks out gruesome instructions way too slowly.

There is no hope for this movie or any other movie that bears any semblance to it. The acting is non-existent as the screen is filled with C-list TV actors the likes of which are only seen at 3 a.m. on basic cable.

The only dignified recommendation that this reviewer can make is that the DVD cover should come with a warning of the films detrimental effect on the mind. On second thought, leave the box unlabeled, as any such warning would likely lead to an increase in sales.

The special features in this movie are its only strong point. Rarely is every scene taken apart and dissected, sometimes literally, to this extent. Every prop and trap is explained step-by-step, catering to those in the audience who are interested in such detail.

The Kingdom

Enter the latest in the long overdue barrage of well-packaged war movie cocktails. These films blend explosions and fight scenes with a sprinkle of arbitrary political message and a pinch of attempted wit and slick dialogue. Stir for 10 seconds and you get “The Kingdom.”

In the movie, a housing compound built for American oil company employees in Saudi Arabia is brutally attacked by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Special agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx) is a leader of an FBI task force that is sent to Saudi Arabia to investigate and bring those responsible to justice. Set aside the typical notions of Hollywood popcorn entertainment and this initially sounds like it could be, dare I say it, an action movie with a real message. Not so fast – throw in Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman as members of the task force, and a random cameo by Tim McGraw, and something goes awry.

Once the task force is on the ground, the expected culture clash ensues and jokes are thrown but, sadly, never quite land. Facing numerous restrictions by both Saudi and American officials, the task force tries to discover as much as possible during its allotted five-day visit.

This film’s greatest weakness was its cast. It felt like it was meant to be an all-star line up but it did nothing but disappoint. Cooper, despite being a consistently great actor, is a complacent variation of his typical moody character and unfortunately lacks any originality in the role. Garner appears to have been placed, rather than cast, into the movie merely to function as a device in a few scenes to underline and remind the audience again of the boring and obvious culture clash between Western and Muslim women.

In the end, this is just a collection of two-dimensional characters going though the motions of acting with no character development to speak of.

“The Kingdom” could have been an acceptable action movie had it not attempted to promote itself into the big league, or had it feigned an insightful view into the current state of a post-September 11 world. Sadly, though, Foxx and crew preferred that approach and chose to quip and smirk away, all while being shot at by the alleged horrible and primitive residents of Saudi Arabia. All that was missing from the end of Foxx’s lines was a well-enunciated “Hoo-rah.” Why not hearken back to his “Jarhead” days?

DVD features for the movie are plentiful and include a good collection of deleted scenes and a “making-of.” One thing that stands out among the bonus features is an interesting featurette that deconstructs a climactic action sequence character-by-character with a large amount of additional footage that should have made it into the actual movie.