|
|
|
This is a weird movie, a dark comedy similar to M*A*S*H and even closer to Catch-22. It's just after Desert Storm, 1991, and three guys pull a map to Saddam Hussein's gold bullion cache outta some prisoner's ass ("Isn't bullion those little cubes you put in water to make soup?"). Let's just say misadventure ensues, including copping a coupla Mercedes sedans for a getaway across the barren desert wasteland and an offer of a free coffeemaker for a soldier's wife.
Yet in this bizarre facsimile of a real war, a military exercise that no one from government leaders to frontline privates take seriously, too much of the suffering is real: a mother's brains are blown out of her head in slow motion while her daughter looks on; a prisoner is electrocuted and force-fed motor oil as part of his torture; dozens of refugees are kept in oppressive submission by a regime only too happy to sacrifice any of its disposable citizens for a buck.
The character development of the three lead characters is optimistically rewarding, without pandering. When's the last time a movie did THAT?!?
Not for everyone, but with its well-crafted storyline, actual defined characters, wit and soul, to say nothing of a subliminal antiwar message underpinning nearly all the action, Three Kings is worth the effort to read between the lines and uncover a truth as elusive to the viewer as to the soldiers caught in the madness.