Three Kings (1999)
Kelly's Heroes in Iraq - that's what you might think having seen the trailers and other publicity for Three Kings, but you'd be wrong, even though the films shares the same plot premise of renegade soldiers from a conquering army trying to liberate (for which read "steal") a fortune in gold from the vanquished army's looted treasure.
Three greedy but likeable grunts - Mark Whalberg, Ice Cube, and Spike Jonze - are joined by officer George Clooney on their mission to help themselves to Saddam's gold. (Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that there are actually four main characters. If you want to know who the three kings are supposed to be, just check out the poster.) Clooney is a born movie star, and although he's had some trouble finding the right vehicles, Three Kings will at last make his agent very happy. Mark Whalberg has shaken off his pop-star turned actor tag - he's now an actor, and a very good one, which is a bit more than can be said for Ice Cube, who might be wise to retain the option of going back to the day job. Spike Jonze (the director of Being John Malkovitch which I'm looking forward to seeing soon) provides light relief as Wahlberg's trailer-trash sidekick. Guided by a map retrieved from a prisoner whose methods of hiding documents looked extremely uncomfortable, the four go AWOL and set off into the desert.
Despite its large budget, Three Kings maintains an indie sensibility, with startling flashes to the soldier's lives back in America, a wickedly black sense of humour, and some wildly varying picture quality - as if the film stock from some sequences had degraded in the Iraqi heat. Director David O. Russell presents his action sequences in refreshing new ways. One shootout in particular is horrifically entrancing, played out in near silence as the camera follows bullets from gun to victim with blurred and jerky slow-motion whip-pans. And in a couple of shots that have caused some controversy because of their rumoured use of a real cadaver, we see, from the inside of the body, just what a bullet does. (It turns out that the rumour was false - Russell had told the cadaver story to Newsweek, got the publicity he wanted, then admitted he'd lied.)
Apart from the film's technical qualities, what makes it particularly impressive is the way the story makes serious points about modern warfare and makes them well. I know it's just an action movie, but this action movie really does manage to deliver a savage critique of US foreign policy during and immediately after the 1991 Gulf War. The thieving incursion of the four soldiers is seen as a metaphor for the wider conflict, and Three Kings does what few films do, let alone mainstream blockbusters - it considers the effects of war on a civilian population. In 1991, George Bush urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein and strongly implied that America would give the rebels more than just moral support. In Three Kings, the members of the raiding party are faced with the consequences of that promise and have to choose whether or not to break it.
The issue of western involvement in the Gulf is also addressed in a scene in which Whalberg's character is tortured by an Iraqi. The mild- mannered interrogator asks what the Americans are doing in his country. When given the usual (and pretty reasonable) response that it is to defend Kuwait, he suggests another reason for American interest in Kuwait by a rather nasty use of some crude oil. Even the manner in which the oil is administered is suggestive of unwanted western influence.
The script (by Russell from John Ridley's story) is full of dark humour, such as when the soldiers discuss the terms they should use to describe their Iraqi foe: a black soldier understandably objects to the use of "sand niggers" and "dune coons", and is happier with "towel-heads". The film occasionally lets itself down and threatens to turn into a dull Hollywood action movie, and the ending is indeed a bit hackneyed and sentimental, but Three Kings is still a fine film which delivers its ideas in a package perfectly designed to capture the imagination of the post-Tarantino audience.
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Gary Jones
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