The Kingdom

Last night I went with my friends Caron, Michael and Tam to see the movie "The Kingdom". I had heard from reviews that it was an intense, action-packed movie and it definitely lived up to that description. If you haven't heard of this film, it's about a team of U.S. investigators set out to find the perpetrators behind a deadly attack in a Middle Eastern country. The opening scene showed a timeline of how the U.S. began it's involvement with the Middle East...a three letter word called OIL...all the way through present day, post 9/11 and the current war on terror.

We always rate the movies we see by using Caron's infamous 10-scale (10 being out of this world and 1 being horrible) We unanimously gave it a 9. While this movie was intense and a little hard to watch (violence wise) I thought the cast did an amazing job and the directors did an excellent job of capturing both sides of the story. They showed glimpses of what the different cultures look like and I appreciated that. I was still pondering this movie on my drive home and it became very clear to me that we, living in America, really do have it pretty good...I don't have to be fearful that if I'm stopped at a stop light and a car pulls up to me that it could be a bomb. I can't even begin to grasp what it would feel like to not feel safe enough to walk out the front door. And I don't want to seem naive as I do realize there are probably those living in America that wish us harm but I just couldn't help but feel extreme gratitude for living in the U.S. and for the troops that are fighting to keep us safe.