Three Kings
Look: I know this one has been out for a few weeks, but the only major movie worth reviewing that opened last weekend was The Insider, and while reviews for that have been pretty solid, I figured I didn't need to sit through three hours of Al Pacino holding forth to realize that tobacco companies don't a) have my best interests at heart and b) play nice when their employees try to make that fact public.
I suppose the same could be said for Three Kings. Did I really need to sit in a theater for two hours to learn that a) war is hell and b) the Gulf War was a media war fought for oil, not freedom of democracy? I did not - but Three Kings reminded me of it in a fresh and absorbing way. This is writer/director David O. Russell's third time behind the camera, and he appears to be of the new generation of auteurs who knows exactly what he wants to say and how to say it well. Although I've not seen his sophomore effort Flirting With Disaster, his debut Spanking the Monkey was a sharp and disturbing riff on King Oedipus. While Three Kings is thematically miles away from that intimate (nudge nudge) portrait, it's another winner.
Color me surprised. I mean, Ice Cube? Mark Wahlberg? George Clooney? The 'Cube has been solid in bit parts before, but Wahlberg's Boogie Nights and Clooney's Out of Sight were merely well-constructed efforts that were ever-so-slightly overrated by the jaded movie press, so I wasn't entirely convinced. But OK, OK, I give - the three can act, and act convincingly, Wahlberg perhaps best of all. When conversing with a Saddam sympathizer while being tortured as a prisoner of war, Wahlberg projects the right blend of panic and pathos. Clooney, too, captures the world-weary cynicism and experience of a man who is clearly tired of fighting a so-called war that he has no reason to believe in. Until he is confronted with its victims, that is, and then creates his own battle. Nora Dunn is a bit histrionic as the NBC reporter on the continual hunt for fresh stories, but then, as a symbol of the media presence in the Gulf War, I suppose that's entirely appropriate. Now that I think about it, she may have underplayed it.
Initially, Three Kings draws you in with pitch-black comedy - in the final days of the Gulf War, the troops are wildly celebrating their victory over...what, exactly? Saddam? He's still in power. Liberating the Kuwaitis? Um....nope, that didn't happen either. It's not really clear what they're celebrating, but then, it wasn't the first time around either. Spike Jonze (the fourth King of the Three Kings...don't ask, it'll wreck the Biblical allusion) provides the comedy as an uneducated hayseed, but just as you think Three Kings might be to the Gulf War what M.A.S.H was to the Korean War, it takes a surprising, screaming left turn into chaos.
Critics who give plot summaries are lazy, ruin half the fun of movie-going, and are likely paid by the word. I'll let you have the fun of seeing for yourself what happens. Suffice to say that Clooney & Co. have the opportunity to score a little extra payback before they are shipped home, only to come face to face with the moral bankruptcy of our dismissal of the Iraqi anti-Saddam rebels whom we were there ostensibly to support. Their three-hour tour of self-imposed duty has about the same outcome as the other famous (sing along with me) three-hour tour, except this one is much bloodier. Do they bolt with the booty, or stay and Fight for What's Right? The answer is obvious, although tempered with a refreshing dose of reality in that initially they are largely motivated by self-gratification.
While the primary message is one we've heard before, it's certainly worth hearing again, and while the bittersweet ending leans toward the latter half of that modifier in mildly predictable fashion, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't engaged and rootin' for the good guys to achieve the nobility for which they sacrificed. It's also worth noting that Russell has an intriguing visual style, choosing to shoot much of the movie in a grainy, high-contrast stock that throws the action into sharp relief - he also films what may be the most measured, calculating, and noncommittal massacre I've seen, making it all the more disturbing.
This is the kind of movie where, when a helicopter is destroyed by heaving a Nerf football laden with C-4 into its windshield, the characters mercifully refrain from any "Hail Mary pass" one-liners, instead reacting with grateful amazement at having survived coupled with a strange sadness at having killed to do so. That is to say, they act like human beings instead of cheap writer's constructs. Thank you, sweet Jesus. Or more specifically, thank you David O. Russell, for having crafted an intelligent script and directed a surprisingly effective movie.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998, 1999 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker