John — I wondered the same thing, though you’ve followed the movie more closely. It seems to me that for years Hollywood has been desperate to find a way of creating action roles that don’t rely on traditional American patriotism. The best example is probably Jason Bourne, who conspicuously opposes America, and for good reason given the assertions of the films: In the Bourne universe, America (or at least the American government) is evil. Matt Damon, who plays Bourne well, I think, has made it pretty clear in interviews that what he likes about Bourne is that he doesn’t fight for his own country — like that “outdated” “imperialist” James Bond.

Similarly I seem to recall that there have been a few movies that have tried to make action heroes out of U.N. operatives (stop laughing!). Remember The Art of War? Here’s the plot summary from IMDB:

Shaw is an operative for the United Nations’ covert dirty-tricks squad, using espionage and quasi-ethical tactics to secure peace and cooperation. When a shipping container full of dead Vietnamese refugees turns up on the docks and China’s ambassador is gunned down at a dinner celebrating a new trade agreement with China and the US, Shaw is framed for the murder and must evade the FBI and Triad gangsters to find out what is really going on.

The funny thing is that movies where you actually cheer the heroism of Americans fighting for America still do well, Hollywood just doesn’t like making them for the most part (Iron Man was a welcome exception). During the Bush years, Hollywood churned out an endless stream of horrible flops tied to the Iraq War or war on terror. They all bombed. Meanwhile, The Kingdom did pretty well. But not necessarily for the reasons the director, Peter Berg, hoped. “I was surprised at how funny the movie played, how much laughter there was,” he told NPR. “And I was very surprised at how hard the audience cheered at the end, when our good guys get our bad guys. It scared me because I thought I was just experiencing full-on American bloodlust and I was not intending for that.”

The response from many (though not all) critics was horror. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said it was “a slick excuse for efficient mayhem that’s not half as smart as it would like to be.” He added that “the film’s thematic similarity to those jingoistic World War II-era ‘Yellow Peril’ films makes it hard not to feel your humanity being diminished.”

I don’t think Turan is a bad critic, but that’s just plain absurd given the fairly obvious message of the film. Unless, of course, you think any moral clarity where the Americans are the good guys fighting real bad guys is somehow a diminishment of humanity.