The Kingdom (15)

Intelligent films about US involvement in the Middle East can be counted on the broken fingers of one hand, and this one makes Syriana look like Citizen Kane. Following a suicide bomb attack on an American enclave in Riyadh, a crack FBI team led by Jamie Foxx is dispatched to Saudi Arabia to hunt down the jihadist cell responsible.

The script gestures at tensions between the Saudis and the Americans, and later at a tentative friendship between Foxx and their guide, but what it really wants to do is celebrate American professionalism under pressure – it's like a recruitment video for FBI Special Ops. Berg stages the climactic shoot-'em-up with gusto, by which point any thoughts of pouring oil on the troubled waters of East-West relations have long evaporated.