Kingdom of Silence Reviews
[It] helps us better understand why our leaders need to represent the high ideals of our country and when they stray, bad things can and will happen.
| Original Score: A- | Oct 21, 2020
Aided by an impressive roster of participants, it provides a clear and enraging picture of the tangled geopolitical dynamics which Khashoggi helped define, and which ultimately ensnared him.
| Oct 8, 2020
...as much about the complicated, co-dependent and sometimes toxic relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia as it about the man himself.
| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 8, 2020
In examining Khashoggi's professional life from its beginning... to its untimely end, Rowley draws a map of how journalistic censorship can extinguish a nation's democratic ambitions almost overnight.
| Oct 5, 2020
Respectful but not hagiographic.
| Oct 5, 2020
A compelling profile not just of Khashoggi, but of the United States' relationship with Saudi Arabia, the documentary charts a quixotic path, from young reporter to self-exiled critic of his homeland.
| Oct 3, 2020
More than just an homage to Khashoggi's life, what's most notable about Rowley's work here is how direct he is in calling out American hypocrisy through the interviews or the facts disclosed.
| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 2, 2020
It's the perfect encapsulation of decades of American policy, where support for democratic impulses has frequently run afoul of financial incentives and pragmatism.
| Oct 1, 2020
Its aim is not simply to serve as a memorial, or as muckraking, but to capture Khashoggi's career in all its contours and contradictions against a backdrop of changing geopolitics.
| Oct 1, 2020
The clear message is that we, as a country, have prioritized our strategic and financial relationship with an authoritarian regime "one step below a theocracy," as one interview subject puts it, over all else, including grotesque human rights violations.
| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 29, 2020