***1/2 out of ****
Year: 1999. Starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze, Nora Dunn, Jamie Kennedy, Mykelti Williamson, Cliff Curtis, Said Taghmaoui. Written by John Ridley (story) and David O. Russell (screenplay). Directed by David O. Russell. Rated R.
If someone had told me five years ago that George Clooney, Marky Mark, and Ice Cube were going to make a war movie together, I'd have assumed it would be a farce. If someone had told me it was going to be a serious war movie, I 'd have laughed in his face. I'd have been wrong. Surprising as it may be, the Georgey-Marky-Icey war movie, entitled "Three Kings," is most definitely a serious movie. What's more surprising is that it's good. Damn good. I don' t know when these three made the transition from being sitcom and rap music stars into being serious actors, but it happened, and the results are astounding.
Clooney stars as Sergeant Major Archie Gates, an aging soldier, close to retirement, who is dissatisfied with the relatively unimportant role he played in the recently-ended Gulf War. While the other American soldiers celebrate the war's completion, he and three other soldiers, Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Chief Elgin (Ice Cube), and Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze), stumble upon a map while searching an Iraqi prisoner. Thanks to Sgt. Gates' special forces training, they discover that the map actually details the location of an Iraqi bunker where several bundles of Kuwaiti gold are stored. The four (not three, as the title might have you believe) soldiers decide to go AWOL from the army and collect the gold for themselves. Their mission is simple: get the gold, get out, and go home rich as kings (get it?). When they get to the town, however, they find that the residents there are being starved and slaughtered because they tried to rebel against Saddam Hussein's rule and are no longer being offered help by the U.S. military because of the peace treaty. Gates and his team now have to decide whether they can ignore the pleas of the Iraqi citizens and take the gold, or if they will stay and help, putting their own lives in danger.
George Clooney gives the performance of his life here, and it's to his credit that he takes a pressure-filled role and runs with it. He's confident, assured, and best of all, he doesn't shake his head back and forth constantly! It seems old George has dropped the nervous head-wagging tick that irritated me throughout the duration of "Batman & Robin," and he's way better off for it. Mark Wahlberg (OK, I'll stop calling him Marky Mark now) gives a fine performance and becomes the idealistic center of the film. When he is kidnapped and subjected to torture in a strange interrogation sequence, we see his innocence destroyed, and it's difficult to watch because of Wahlberg's sympathetic portrayal. As for Ice Cube, I'll give him this: He made me forget I was watching a rapper on screen. Give credit to all three lead actors. They are able to successfully shed their former identities and not only give us three believable soldiers to follow around, but also three guys we might actually want to follow around. Heck, add in Spike Jonze, a music video director who does a good job despite being given the most clichéd role in the film, and you've actually got four actors who shed their former identities to create likable characters (which is why it probably should have been called "Four Kings," but why complain?).
Director David O. Russell tells a wacky kind of story, one that's both straightforward and disjointed at the same time. (Bear with me here . . .) It has a fairly simple underlying plot, about four soldiers off to steal gold, but Russell throws in so much that "Three Kings" ends up discussing anything and everything you could've imagined about the Gulf War. The film's politics are all over the place, and I loved it all the more for its craziness. This is a Hollywood release, so "Three Kings" has its share of sentimentality, but the film is still a challenging work, and it's willing to take chances even at the risk of offending people. For example, we don't get the cliché of the "evil Arab," which seems to have come out of American moviemakers' desire to always have some ethnic group or nationality branded as the enemy.
Considering that it's an American film starring almost nothing but American actors, "Three Kings" remains remarkably even-handed. As is often the case in war, morals become muddled and confused, which is exactly what Russell does here. There are no good guys or bad guys, just people, ones with families and emotions. It's kind of refreshing to see a film that doesn't paint an idealistic picture of soldiers, but instead attempts to show how a war affects not only the men fighting it, but also civilians, women and children alike. Special care has been taken to make sure "Three Kings" doesn 't become a gung-ho action flick, and though there is enough action to please those looking for it, the film clearly has a greater purpose. "Three Kings" is a film that resonates with the viewer, and the MTV-style editing, unlike that of the woeful "Stigmata," actually serves that purpose. Russell takes his camera inside a human body to show the effects of a bullet wound, as ducts fill up with bile and a lung deflates. A particularly jarring sequence involves the initial gun battle in the Iraqi village. Russell films this in almost painfully slow fashion, following each individual bullet fired by both the Iraqis and the Americans. The result is not only a stylistically fascinating sequence, but a clear illustration of how a bunch of guys holding guns will eventually snap and trigger a shoot-out, though nobody is really at fault. Russell includes these stylistic touches throughout the film, and though he may go overboard at times, it never feels terribly unnecessary.
The script, aside from being admirably even-handed, provides a good mix of humor and drama. For every emotionally rending scene (and there are plenty of them, complete with crying children), there is a funny "slow-down" scene to counter it. This structure can be annoying if the funny scenes don't work, but fortunately, "Three Kings" has humor that hits more often than it misses. A particularly amusing sequence involves a desperate reporter (Nora Dunn) who thinks she's getting the story of her life, but has actually been led on a wild goose chase by Clooney. The opening scenes, with soldiers partying, contain several deft touches of comedy, and director Russell demonstrates a certain dry wit here that is very welcome. His script is also able to juggle discussions of several different issues, many of which come out during Wahlberg's interrogation. The Iraqi captor questions Wahlberg on several different topics, including Michael Jackson's skin color and George Bush. The conversation has a sort of twisted, Tarantino-esque quality to it, and it is strangely intriguing, despite ending up on a topic that's wildly different from the one it started with. Unfortunately, the film's only real problem comes up in political discussions such as this one, and it's the same problem that comes up with his stylistic camera work: he goes to far. The interrogation scene is a perfect example of this, as Wahlberg's questioner asks what the war was about, and then proceeds to pour oil down Marky's throat to illustrate his point. First of all, does it have to be this obvious what the director's political message is? Can't Russell trust us to understand his ideas without (in a very apt metaphor) cramming it down our throats? Furthermore, exactly who doesn't know that the Gulf War was about protecting American oil interests in Kuwait? There are several scenes in which the political commentary reaches the point of overkill, and the film's ending is just a little too happy, but these are relatively minor complaints when compared to the film as a whole.
"Three Kings" is an important film, if only because we hadn't had one like this made about the Gulf War yet. (I know, it technically takes place after the war, but you know what I mean, dammit!) It's remarkable for the relatively unbiased view it takes of the war, and for the non-stereotypical nature of the villains. A quick word of warning: Please don't believe the movie trailers for "Three Kings," which would have you believe the film is a comedy. It has some humor, and it's certainly satirical, but it's more of a drama than a comedy. Many of the film's scenes will seem entirely too violent if one expects a laugh-out-loud farce, and much of "Three Kings" is downright disturbing. The film intends to shock, but not, I think, without good reason. After all, war is hell, for both sides, and "Three Kings" doesn 't shy away from that fact.
-reviewed by Shay Casey
For more reviews, go to http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Land/4252/movies.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews