The Kingdom and not Ike

I'm sitting here on Friday night with nothing to do while waiting for Hurricane Ike to arrive. As I was doing the absolute guy thing and flipping channels every 43 seconds, I came across the movie, The Kingdom, right at the beginning. Since I don't go to movies that often, I hadn't seen it yet, even though I'd heard it was good. I'd heard right. My observations in no particular order except for number 1 being number 1:

1) Yes, I've been a Jennifer Garner fan for quite a while, even though I pull my hair out when her and her husband (who I enjoy as an actor, too) talk politics. But, holy smokes, Ms. Garner kicked serious butt in this movie. I have a whole new appreciation of her as an action hero as she was shooting, stabbing, kicking, even biting bad guys. I thought her quite attractive before, but now, flat out kickin' hot.

2) Tim McGraw was in this.

3) Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights (tv version) was in this. What else was Kyle Chandler in? He was Buddy Jackson in Pure Country.

4) Peter Berg is very accomplished. As I listened to the music (cool instrumental guitar tracks) during the movie, I kept thinking that this music was very similar to the Friday Night Lights music. So after the movie, I go to the IMDb site and start looking things up. I knew Peter Berg made a cameo in The Kingdom, but he also directed it. Then I realized that he developed, executive produced and wrote much the Friday Night Lights tv series and wrote the screenplay for the Friday Night Lights movie. That explains a lot about Kyle Chandler and Tim McGraw having parts in The Kingdom. All these connections explain the first part of #4, the musical similarities.

5) The closing scene says lots about the kind of difficult situation we are in as we attempt to stop the violence of terrorism.

Loved the movie. Jamie Foxx is great. Chris Cooper remains one of my favorite actors since he appeared as July Johnson in Lonesome Dove. And, well, there is that Jennifer Garner thing from #1.