“The Kingdom” from director Peter Berg is continuing the fall season trend of serious, good, intelligent films for grownups that was kicked off last week with “In The Valley of Elah” and “Into The Wild.”

It’s a pleasure to be going to screenings these days, when these kinds of films outnumber the “Sydney White”s and “Game Plan”s. And coming soon, we have “Rendition” and “Things We Lost In The Fire” and “Gone Baby Gone” to sink our teeth into.

So I thought “The Kingdom” was a well-written smart action film with some great performances. It manages to be pro-American, but not anti-Saudi, which I think is important. It’s clear from the script that the bad guys are an extremist fundamentalist group which is not supported by the Saudi government.

However, I was alarmed at the audience reaction to some of the later scenes in the film. Without giving anything away, our American protagonists end up in a dicey situation and have to gun themselves out. At which point, the audience I saw the film with became wildly bloodthirsty and cheered fervently whenever someone got blown away. I guess you can’t help people’s emotional responses to entertainment, but I couldn’t help worrying that the message of the film might be lost on some people if al they are seeing is “good guys” (i.e. U.S.) versus “bad guys” (i.e. them) in a bloody exchange of bullets.

The film is about how each side believes it is right, how everyone is fighting for what they believe in, how every man with a gun has a family back home that he wants to protect, that everyone thinks God is on his side. I hope that is what people take away from this film, not just that America kicked ass.