Three Kings
A Review
By Jeremiah Rickert
Starring: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze, and Nora Dunn Written and Directed by: David O. Russel w/John Ridley
The advertising for this film would have you believe that you are about to see a caper-film. The ads portray the kind of talky disco swagger that we have come to associate with the films of Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino's films, however disjointed on the surface, still contained a linear narrative to follow. Three Kings never finds this straight line, and instead is a very schizoid, music-video of a film that never really finds its own place or purpose. At the end, the single biggest thought that crossed my mind was, what did I just see? Was it a drama, comedy, action adventure, caper-film, political statement, what was it? My only answer was that it is a film that people praise because they don't have any idea what else to say about it. Now that just about every major reviewer in the country has raved about it, those who thought the movie was so much artistic vomit, will only bewilder and perplex.
This film is basically Kelly's Heroes (1970) for the Gulf War. While searching Iraqi prisoners after a cease-fire, a pair of American soldiers, Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) and Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) discover a map that seems to have directions to some Iraqi Bunkers out in the desert. Meanwhile Special Forces Captain Archie Gates, (George Clooney) has been fed up with his cease-fire job of escorting Christina Amanapour-like reporter Adriana Cruz (Nora Dunn) around the battle sites. He is told by his superior that "This is a Media War, and you'd better get on board." While cavorting with a female reporter who is a rival of his charge, he hears about some Kuwaiti gold, and of course, he and the guys who found the map come together and come up with a plan: let's zip out in the desert and search these bunkers, there and back in a day, so we can quit our cruddy jobs back home. Also along for the ride (and the comic relief) is the adorable country bumpkin Conrad Vig, played by Music Video director and dancer (Fatboy Slim's "Praise You") Spike Jonze. Vig's character is a familiar archetype in these films: a brainlessly cute hayseed who of course is destined to die. Gates hires a buddy to lose Cruz out in the desert and heads off after his booty.
Once the players on in place, they grab a Hummer and head out to make their fortune. This would not be possible normally, but Russell's victorious Allied Army is portrayed as an extremely unorganized bunch of frat boys (and girls) who while away the hours drinking and dancing to rap music. Everyone is so distracted by enjoying all of the rich trappings of American excess, that our heroes have no problem slipping out to get the gold. Russell seems to be saying that the Gulf War and those who fought in Desert Storm lacked any kind of moral imperative. Any notions of patriotism are quite sincerely lacking.
On the way to the bunkers, the boys fire their guns in the air skeet-shoot with nerf footballs, carefree and overconfident that everything will go as planned. However, the operation hits a speed bump when they stumble into the middle of a conflict between Saddam's loyal soldiers, and rebels who are taking up George Bush's appeal to rise up against Saddam. George Bush is name-dropped so often that his name soon becomes a sort of ironic punchline. I half expected someone to mention his 90% approval rating with a nod and a wink to the audience. Bush is portrayed as a great betrayer when Clooney and gang, limited by a cease-fire agreement with Saddam, refuse to become involved in the civil-war. They are only interested in the Gold and nothing else. The steely reserve begins to soften and soon they find themselves duking it out with The Republican Guard, and getting rescued themselves by Iraqi rebels. Once here they have no choice but to help. It isn't because of morals, it is because they have painted themselves into a corner and cannot finish the job on their own. It's up to them to get the rebels safely into Iran before the hammer is dropped on them, and in return the rebels will help them carry the gold. After that, it's a race to the border.
Politics show up in a less-than-subtle way after Barlow is captured. He is subjected to shock-torture and we get to listen to an Iraqi talk about how his child was murdered by an American bomb. The interrogator also pours oil down Barlow's throat, asserting the cliche notion that the war was only about oil. This is just short of the director showing up and saying "Man, we Americans are sure bullies." Luckily after being locked in a closet with all sorts of big-money items such as Levis and Electronic Appliances, Barlow finds a cellphone and after failing to directly contact the Allied Forces, decides to call home. My main problem with this scene is the fact that a cellphone will lose a connection going under an overpass or a tunnel, yet Barlow has no problem calling out of a closet in an underground bunker. Go figure. Wahlberg, however, gives his best performance, and his character was the only really sympathetic of the bunch.
Three Kings is filmed with a dizzying combination of slow-motion, quick pans, and jump cuts. At times the contrast is cranked, giving the film a washed out "documentary" quality that we saw in Saving Private Ryan too recently for it to be used here. Russell also generously shows what actually happens to a body when it is shot, complete with rupturing gall bladders and organ-piercing slugs from an "inside" view of the body. Some of the bloodletting is portrayed with comic undertones, and some is portrayed with an urgent kind of heavy-melodrama.
By the time the real army comes looking for these guys, they have pretty much broken every major military rule in the book, Luckily, however, the reporter they tried to ditch is around to film everything, thus Gates seems to have learned all about the "media war" and how to use it to his advantage. The final images of the film are the "What ever happened to..." blurbs that used to show up at the end of several of the teensploitation films of the 80s.
Overall the film was all over the map, never once deciding on whether it was a comedy or a drama, or whatever. Perhaps Russell wanted it this way, but it doesn't make it a great artistic achievement. The characters really never change. Afterwards they may have been a little shaken up by what they saw, but they still were just out to steal some gold, and everything they did was supposed to lead to pulling off their caper, no matter how they tried to dress it up as "just helping out." They are portrayed as a microcosm of the rest of the Allied efforts in the Gulf. Only $$$$ matters, nothing else. Unlike films like M.A.S.H. and Saving Private Ryan, we aren't given ordinary humans trying to cope with inhumane circumstances, we are given greedy pirates who try to take advantage of the power and position that their victorious Army has given them. I really cared if Hawkeye Pierce managed to keep his humanity intact, and I really cared if Capt. John Miller survived the war. I didn't care about the leads in Three Kings. Again, perhaps that is what Russell intended, but that doesn't make it great cinema. It plays more like a really long tantrum.
Of the $7.50 I paid for this film, it was worth $0.00 (Nada)
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