The Kingdom begins with a history lesson, a visual timeline which starts in 1933, and takes us through to the present. It takes up only a couple of minutes at the beginning of the movie and merely scratches the surface of the history of Saudi-US relations, but Peter Berg is still to be commended for providing some context for the premise of this film. It’s no Syriana, but in some ways that’s a good thing. Syriana was brilliant, and complex, an absolute must-see, but a wee bit confusing. The Kingdom manages to both entertain and educate, slipping information about radical Islam and Saudi princes in between car chases and gunfights.

I’ve had a mad crush on Berg since he appeared as Dr. Billy Cronk, the smart, sexy, passionate doctor on the series “Chicago Hope” in the mid-90s. He went on to direct the film Friday Night Lights, which has since become a television series (he also directed the pilot), and has just wrapped Hancock, starring Will Smith, Jason Bateman, and Charlize Theron, which will be out this summer. He’s always struck me as a smart actor and director, willing to delve below the surface of his subject matter, and The Kingdom, for the most part, doesn’t disappoint in this regard. It does suffer from some clunky exposition for the benefit of the audience. “How many princes are there in Saudi Arabia? And do they each have a palace?” don’t seem like questions these agents would have to ask, for example. It’s also hard to believe that forensics expert Janet Mayes (Jennifer Garner) would be unaware of the fact that it is against Islamic law for her to touch a dead Muslim.

In spite of all that, The Kingdom manages to deliver a fast-paced, suspenseful action movie with snippets of some pretty well-written dialog, and some sharp acting. Jason Bateman provides comic relief as Leavitt, the wisecracking, Pixies t-shirt wearing (he’s an FBI agent AND a hipster!) who arrives in Saudi Arabia with a passport marked with three Israeli stamps (“My grandma lives there, is that okay?” he tells the uneasy Saudi guard). Chris Cooper (who coincidentally also appears in Syriana as well as Jarhead) steals all of his scenes as FBI Bomb Tech Grant Sykes, a slow-talking, quick-witted Southerner, and Saudi Colonel Faris Al Ghazi, who ends up helping the FBI team in their investigation, is brilliantly played by Ashraf Barhom. Leading the team is Jamie Foxx as Ronald Fleury, a fiercely determined agent out to discover the perpetrator of a bomb attack on an American compound in Riyadh which has killed not only a hundred or so Americans, but one of their own, an agent on the scene. This is what fuels the whole team’s determination and provides the emotional hook for the story, but this is not a revenge movie in any sense, and this is also what saves it. In spite of the forced nature of some of the scenes, Berg’s message here is ultimately that the Saudis and we have much in common – love of family, pride in our culture, and a sometimes manic resolve to preserve and protect what is ours, no matter the sacrifice.

Jack Johnson is like a nice, big bowl of macaroni and cheese. I’d love to sit down and dig into some for lunch, but you wouldn’t catch me dead serving it to my porn star friends for dinner, or ordering it in public. Jack is…well, he’s nice. And I mean that, I really do. Plus, he’s a hot, eco-friendly, Hawaiian surfer dude, which is always an added bonus when you’re trying to sell CDs and concert tickets. I’d do a feature with him, if you catch my drift. Still, he has always left me a little dissatisfied, and that’s just something you never want to hear from a porn star like me.

Johnson is following firmly in the footsteps of Nick Drake and Elliot Smith, two handsome and soulful guitar playing boys who had the unfortunate tendency of being rather suicidal, a trait which informed their music with a great intensity but also led to their very early demise. I’m not suggesting that all great guitar boys should be depressed, but Johnson, who survived a terrifying surfing accident at the age of 17 and lived to tell the tale, married his college sweetheart, and generally seems to have a sunny disposition, could do with a little more of the Dark Side in his work.

I get the sense that Jack just isn’t digging deep enough, and after listening to Sleep Through The Static I feel a little…yawn. To be fair, the album delivers a catchy, satisfying sound with cleanly played guitar riffs. He’s mixed it up a bit on this album by adding keyboardist Zach Riff to the band, and the tracks which feature Riff (Riff’s riffs? I crack me up) lend a depth and richness to the band.

Maybe it’s just that I’m going through a messy breakup, but cute love songs kind of make me want to puke right now. Be that as it may, I think I can still objectively and critically say that Jack Johnson’s love songs are both sweet and rather forgettable, and that the best songs on the album are not about his love for his wife Kim (Angel, Same Girl), but his personal struggles (Enemy), fatherhood (Go On, Adrift), and concern for the world at large (Sleep Through The Static).

Take the Sleep Through The Static, an anti-war tune with witty, free association lyrics:

Well mighty mighty appetite
we just eat ‘em up and keep on driving
Freedom can be freezing take a picture from the pretty side
Mind your manners wave your banners
What a wonderful world that this angle can see

Or, a more introspective track such as Enemy, which relates a dream:

After we spoke I had a dream that I broke
The teeth from a mouth of a snake
Then I choked on the teeth they were mine all along
I picked up the pieces when I woke up
I put them in a boat made of things that I don’t want to see
I blew on the sail watched it drift out to sea

Haven’t we all had that broken teeth dream? Juxtapose those with the groaners from Angel (“she gives me presents with her presence alone”) or Monsoon (“monsoon-er or later”) and you’ll see what I mean. Jack would benefit from a lot more free association and a lot less trying hard to be witty, because when he does that it falls flat, and that’s something NO porn star wants to see.