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Every generation has to make do with what it’s been given. So while now and then an especially gifted filmmaker such as Steven Spielberg, who’s of the Vietnam demo but managed one heckuva D-Day movie, can tell a good war story set outside his decades of experience, younger, mortal directors have kind of been left in the lurch when it comes to sweeping new battlefield settings. If an up-and-comer wanted to attempt a contemporary statement on the order of Catch 22 or M*A*S*H, s/he was out of luck; it’s hard to wax heroic about the cruise-ship invasion of Grenada or the 13,000-man posse we sent to Panama to arrest one pineapple-faced crack dealer.
Then the Gulf War came along. Sure, it was over quickly -- well, sort of over -- and involved a lot more in the way of guys pushing buttons than crawling along face-down in the dirt to pull a wounded buddy to safety. But, ya gotta work with what you’re given.
Enter David O. Russell. People took notice of his quirky, if self-indulgent (as the title would indicate) 1994 indie debut Spanking the Monkey, and Hollywood people sat up when his next film, the hilariously self-assured Flirting with Disaster, actually made some money. So when they waved a studio checkbook under his nose, he naturally decided he’d head off in an entirely different direction and attempt his own martial opus, set it in the aftermath of Desert Storm. But rather than aim for something such as Platoon, with Three Kings he seems to have drawn most of his inspiration from the 1970 Clint Eastwood stolen Nazi gold comedy, Kelly’s Heroes.
George Clooney plays Archie Gates, a soon-to-retire Army Special Forces major with little to do but pursue cute news-goddess booty after the ceasefire has been implemented in Iraq. Bored with the troops’ outpouring of drunken relief and endless mangled choruses of that Lee Greenwood song, he decides to pad his pension when a hand-drawn map to the location of a fortune in stolen Kuwaiti gold turns up only partially hidden in a live Iraqi body cavity. Armed with the “ass-map,” a Humvee, and three other soldiers -- Elgin (Ice Cube), Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), and Vig (Spike Jonze, who’s a breakout film director himself, kind of avant Guard) -- he casually sets out on what looks like an insanely lucrative sightseeing trip.
Of course, things go wrong. Not the least of which is the intrusion of their conscience when they find the gold in an outpost where some of Saddam’s surviving thugs are torturing the domestic opposition, who, having once been urged to “rise up and overthrow,” are left high and dry at the cessation of hostilities. From then on it becomes both an internal and external struggle as they try to get the bullion, save a few locals, avoid court-martial, and evade a stubborn, past-her-prime, “five-time Emmy-nominated” reporter (Nora Dunn). Oh, and keep from getting shot, gassed, or beaten to death by the Iraqis -- that’s important, too.
Russell is a fountain of absurd, if often violent, visual humor, running amuck with his bigger budget; milk trucks explode, cows step on land mines, bullets are tracked like arrows, and then there’s the much-ballyhooed supposed cadaver shot (which looks too fresh and fluid to be a real corpse, but I wouldn’t swear to it), wherein Gates explains the mechanics of a bullet wound. The guy is undeniably talented with a camera, staging his narration with washed-out, overdeveloped cinematography that effectively create a bright, sweaty, sun-stroke look, like that Oliver Stone used in U-Turn. (small coincidence: U-Turn was scripted by John Ridley from his own novel, Stray Dogs. He also wrote a screenplay about American soldiers stealing Iraqi gold, which Russell saw and liked before writing a new script using only, he claims, Ridley’s basic idea. Much controversy ensued, with Ridley finally getting a story credit for Three Kings.)
He also delves into the tragedy of the war and its aftermath, both in the plight of the refugees and the humanity of the enemy. But he relies too much on an unsubtle juxtaposition of conversation and brutality to get these points across; in one interminable sequence, the captured Barlow survives beating, electric shock, and even having crude oil poured down his throat while his torturer goes on and on about how he lost family during the air strikes, to the point where we’re wishing a bomb would come crashing through the bunker and put and end to the preachy metaphors.
Clooney is once again his usual likable, good-hearted rogue -- no stretch there -- and Wahlberg does a serviceable job of playing victim. More unexpected is Ice Cube, who has apparently been taking acting lessons. His emotion selector is still stuck on the “sneer” setting, but he’s getting a little more mileage from a few variations on this theme, such as “sympathetic sneer,” and the especially effective “amazed sneer.” (Don’t you wonder what he’s like to deal with on a movie set? “Excuse me, Mr. Cube -- could we try another take please? And this time, try breathing through your mouth a little.”) The most enjoyable cast member to watch, though, is the impish Jonze as Vig, an illiterate backwoods slacker caught up in the most exciting thing that will ever happen in his trailer-trash, rusted-truck life.
Entertaining? Yeah. The Thin Red Line? Hardly. But considering the twisted, farcical, incomplete nature of the conflict it portrays, Three Kings probably the best film treatment the Gulf War will get. B-
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