three kings
Directed by David O. Russell
George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze, Nora Dunn.
playing at theaters accessible to everybody - multiplexes, etc.
(available on video April 11, 2000)
*  *  *  1/2    (three and one half stars)
no time to read the whole review?
THE JIST of MY PROSE
A powerful statement that sits on the fence for its entire duration. Russell's style opens new doors in comedy, satire and visual interpretation while the rise of George Clooney as this generation's Cary Grant continues unevaded. An extremely unnerving film only by the necessity of it's repetition - good or bad, right or wrong, etc.

‘Three Kings’ is more than meets the eye. It is a cynically charged film about
political entanglements in the Persian Gulf. It is the story of men who find it in
themselves to go against their birthright (American greed) and risk their lives to
save Iraqi civilians - to do the bare bones of their job as soldiers : protect the
victims of war. It is also a film of exposition, treating the writer’s views as it’s own
and spewing them between the lines of rapid fire dialogue. It is a film daring us to
be angry, asking us to repress what we feel and cling to what our gut tells us - to
think as a soldier would, objectively and without regard for our own convenience.
Clooney tells us that everyone does according to their own "necessity" - a term that
changes it’s meaning many times throughout the duration of this film.

At times the contradictions in the text are so hopeless, so illogical that it becomes
too much for the characters, for the audience and for the writer. These
contradictions make the film - they really spell out what's wrong here, in so many
words. What a wonderful way to give life to this tale. Here is David O. Russell
(‘Spanking the Monkey’, ‘Flirting with Disaster’), coming out of nowhere to hit us in
the groin with a film that is at once brutal and unflinching, sometimes funny, but
leaves the viewer triumphant and angry at the same time - instilling Russell’s
variance in both our opinion and our mood. He has written a terrific and
wonderfully textured screenplay that mocks the very station we operate from -
American self-interest. Yet, the pleasing thing about it’s sarcastic drawl is that it
rewards the characters for acting on their own, out of their perception of our
American ideals - the original ideals that have lost their luster in these times.

As unpatriotic as a film can be, this one has patriotic characters, to the last, and still
manages to work. There isn’t a single discrepancy that doesn’t power the mill of
critique that is ‘Three Kings’. It’s chock full of broad shots at war, the military, the
American people - and yet - it manages to tell the story through short, bursting
strands. It’s a film with many different elements, among them drama, comedy,
action and political satire. It’s short scenes, carefully structured to juxtapose
meaning and narrative in a dizzying fashion, continually take the scale of the movie
down to our level. As much as I feel this is an art movie, it’s made simple, but not
undermining. It’s the ultimate paradox - a feel-good movie that makes us angry,
but gets away with hailing from Hollywood.

Shot in a shadowy grain by Newton Thomas Seigal (‘The Usual Suspects’), the film
is one tone on top of another. Using this technique to burn the audience, who
seemed so unsure of the categorization (again, at the burnout screen where I
viewed it), also adds to the incongruent feel of this film. While it’s holding us in a
short-attention-span bubble, cutting extremely fast, it’s also taking it’s time to
examine the consciences and decisions of it’s characters. It helps that it’s so
well-acted (Clooney, Wahlberg and Ice Cube have a grand chemistry) and further
gives these men a look that can inspire us to put ourselves in their place. It's
universal, but contains admirable techniques, ones that aren't normally present in a
multiplex.

My final feeling here is that ‘Three Kings’, overall, was an anti-war film. An
argument between myself and my significant other raged that, though anti-war
films are of no use in the real world (criticizing a country for getting involved in
war in the first place or criticizing a country for not stepping in to prevent hostile
and violent takeovers-either way you look at it, you’re wrong), this is an example
of what is, for all intensive purposes an anti-war film that nearly talks itself out of
being that way. It’s a timely and excellent companion piece to ‘Wag the Dog’, when
we discuss in-depth profiles of both the media and our government’s manipulation
of it. But what struck me here, and I’m dishing the highest of complements, was
that it resembled to me less ‘Kelly’s Heroes’ than Stanley Kubrick’s masterwork
‘Paths of Glory’, another film about three men trapped inside a system that regards
orders above moral conduct. On the other hand, when all was said and done,
‘Three Kings’ felt like no other film I’ve seen in my years on this earth. Every time
it was offered a direction, it chose wisely. Every time the film clicked, it was
ingenious and every time it drove it’s point home, it did it in an original and moving
manner. If the stance is that war is wrong, this film doesn’t have a single
American character that believes that. Nor does it have a single concise moment
that brings us to that conclusion. The film is a series of building blocks that stack
themselves in your psyche and forge their opinion deep within your consciousness.
When it’s over, you know exactly how you feel, but pinpointing why is another
matter altogether. These men aren’t saving lives because they have come to know
and love the Iraqi refugees, they are doing it out of their "necessity" for goodness.
In a gigantic puzzle of political complexity, a shining ray of nobility is the most
beautiful thing in the universe.
 

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