THREE KINGS RATING: 7 / 10 --> Good movie
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David O. Russell is a man to be reckoned with. He starts his career off with a "comedy" about incest between a mom and son called SPANKING THE MONKEY. Follows it up with yet another very original story packed with a slew of interesting and quirky characters called FLIRTING WITH DISASTER (8.5/10). And now this film, which at least one critic (Roger Ebert) has called a "masterpiece".
PLOT: Operation Desert Storm has just ended. Now, four military men find a map leading to the gold stolen by Saddam Hussein in a prisoner's ass, and decide to take it upon themselves to find the stash and retire in wealth upon their return home. But what do you know...things are never that simple.
CRITIQUE: This film is like no other "war film" that I have ever seen. Sure, it does actually take place after the war, and isn't necessarily based on action or heavy machine gun shootouts, but you can still consider it a war movie considering the goings-on in the film. It's got a style, a feel, a unique look, unlike any of those other murky combat flicks. Could it be the fact that it actually toys with comedy as much as it does drama? Perhaps...although I personally found some of the humor to be misplaced in a film with so many disturbing images. Having said that, this film is no SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (8/10) in that regard either, it actually presents us with various original scenarios featuring gun fights which I have never encountered before in any film. Very interesting to watch. It also decided to show us, in graphic detail, what a bullet does to someone after it enters their body. Kind of icky to see, but interesting nonetheless.
That aside, this film basically offers us a unique war perspective with some decent action scenes, a creative style, some good humor, a spic-and-span ending, but not much more than that. The acting performances were also very good, with George Clooney really coming into his own with this picture. Wahlberg also comes through, despite another gratuitous shot of him running around without his top (Who am I kidding, if I had half the six-pack that bastard's got stacked, I'd be going to work without my shirt every day!). Even Ice Cube and Spike Jonze (That's right, the music video director!) got into the act with some pretty effective scenarios. The film as a whole worked for me because I was never bored while watching it, enjoyed its creative take on many Hollywood staple scenes, and was even a little touched here and there. Not a great film, but certainly one worthy of earning your hard-earned cash in the local movie houses.
Little Known Facts about this film and its stars: Director David O. Russell has written and directed his first three pictures all by himself, although this one has a "story" credit to John Ridley, the man who wrote the novel "Stray Dogs", upon which Oliver Stone's U-TURN was filmed. Russell got his first picture made when he was in his mid-thirties, and apparently spent 18 months exhaustively researching the Gulf War and its aftermath before writing this movie. Director/actor Spike Jonze's real name is Adam Spiegel. He recently married famed director Francis Ford Coppola's daughter Sofia. His only two other "acting" performances before this movie were as a "Airbag EMT Beltran" in 1997's THE GAME and as a "teenage drug customer" in 1993's MI VIDA LOCA (No, not the Ricky Martin music video!). He's best known for having directed many unique music videos such as "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys, "Buddy Holly" from Weezer, "Da Funk" by Daft Punk and "Praise Me" by Fatboy Slim. And yes, that is him dancing around like an idiot dance teacher in the video. He will be making his directorial debut in this fall's BEING JOHN MALKOVICH. Rumors were floating around when this picture opened about the use of an actual cadaver during the "let's show the bullet inside one's body" scene. It turned out to be a completely unfounded rumor, since no dead body would ever be used for such an unnecessary exercise. George Clooney is the nephew of singer Rosemary Clooney and the cousin of actor Miguel Ferrer. George's middle name is Timothy. He says he will never get married, nor have any children, but Michelle Pfeiffer and Nicole Kidman have bet $10,000 each that he will be a father before he turns 40 (2001). Ironically, Clooney's first role was in a 1984 TV series called "E/R", and ten years later, he returned to TV drama with another small hit called "ER". Ice Cube, real name O'Shea Jackson, started rapping when he was 14 in South Central Los Angeles, where he pushed his notion of gangsta rap, a genre he virtually invented and defined with his old group N.W.A., to new levels. Actor Mark Wahlberg will also co-star alongside George Clooney in his next picture called THE PERFECT STORM, and have George as a producer on his next project after that. This film was shot in three places: El Centro, California, three weeks among deserts and sand dunes; Mexicali, Mexico, its unobstructed landscape served as the backdrop for the film's opening sequence; and Casa Grande, Arizona. This film was originally titled THE SPOILS OF WAR.
Review Date: October 1, 1999
Director: David O. Russell
Writer: David O. Russell
Producers: Paul Junger Witt and Charles Roven
Actors: George Clooney as Archie Gates
Mark Wahlberg as Troy Barlow
Ice Cube as Chief Elgin
Spike Jonze as Conrad Vig
Genre: Action
Year of Release: 1999
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(c) 1999 Berge Garabedian
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