Three
Kings
Rated R
Opens Friday, Oct. 1
Director David O. Russell's previous work includes a dark
comedy about a young man who sleeps with his mother (Spanking
the Monkey) and a screwball comedy about a neurotic New
Yorker searching for his birth parents (Flirting with Disaster).
So, you might think that the rugged horrors of war would not
be this director's proper theater of operations. In fact,
it is precisely Russell's black, suspicious vision of modern
American behavior that not only makes him suitable for the
genre but makes his latest, Three Kings, far more complex
than a typical war movie. Russell's already shown that relationships
between regular people are muddled messes fueled by deception
and selfishness, so exploring the mucked-up attempted accords
between antagonist countries is actually just an extension
of his earlier themes--especially considering his chaotic,
amoral target, the Gulf War.
The film begins with a startling, somewhat droll image:
Army Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) shoots an armed man
standing atop a dune in the distance. Before popping him,
Barlow is unsure what to do and continually asks his comrades
for suggestions. See, it's March 1991, Saddam Hussein has
been kicked out of Kuwait, and a cease-fire has been declared
between the Allied forces and Iraq. Russell introduces us
to the conflict in a detached, nearly farcical manner; confusion
and questionable ethics give way to victory being celebrated
by volunteer soldiers who've never tasted combat ("I didn't
think I'd get to see anyone get shot in this war," Barlow's
buddy exclaims). Already, Three Kings is onto something
intriguing: This is a war movie in which the war is supposedly
over.
Back at camp, Special Forces Capt. Archie Gates (George
Clooney), a battle-weary veteran set to retire in two weeks,
has an assignment to assist a haughty TV journalist (Nora
Dunn) in "covering" the conflict. However, when he discovers
that three G.I.s--Barlow, Staff Sgt. Chief Elgin (Ice Cube)
and Pvt. Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze)--have found a map rolled
up in an Iraqi man's ass, he ditches the job. Apparently,
the map leads to an enormous stash of gold bullion taken
from Kuwait by Saddam's army. Gates, whose mercenary morality
perceives necessity as the impetus for human endeavor, has
no problem with stealing it back, and he convinces the others
to join him. After all, what else are they going to get
out of this war?
What the soldiers think will be a relatively easy task
becomes something much more challenging and sobering. Once
they reach their destination, desperate Iraqi citizens welcome
them as heroes, believing that President Bush will honor
his word and provide aid to the refugees after overthrowing
Hussein. Initially, the soldiers remain removed and single-minded
about their task, but after witnessing an Iraqi soldier
blowing an innocent mother's head off while her daughter
watches, Gates experiences a crisis--indeed, a discovery--of
conscience. Though the rest of the men want to hightail
it out of there with the loot (they freed Kuwait, after
all; this aftermath isn't their problem), Gates decides
to help the villagers. The rest of the movie chronicles
the bizarre situations the group endures as they attempt
to save innocent lives, keep the gold and avoid getting
caught and court-martialed.
Three Kings goes against any expectations we might
have for a typical action-war picture. Sure, there are the
usual bouts of brutality, conscience and brotherly love
among soldiers, but Russell toys with these conventions
in a manner that is simultaneously sarcastic and surreal,
yet completely genuine. His distinct brand of comedy is
key to skewering these traditions, for he isn't simply reveling
in gallows humor but blending screwball, slapstick and hilarious
takes on dysfunctional interpersonal relations at the most
unexpected moments. The result is so disarming that it works
like an unseen bullet. When Vig reminisces about Barlow's
first kill, Russell does the usual flashback to the moment,
but this time the enemy's head cartoonishly pops off and
blood spurts out of his neck like a geyser. You laugh at
the absurdity of the image, you laugh at the surprise, and
then you laugh at Vig's TV- and movie-addled brain. Russell
spits out comedy within tension, highlighting the movie's
vision of bedlam. The madness is also intensified: The juxtaposition
of the vast, natural-looking desert landscape with bunkers
cluttered with Cuisinarts, television sets, blue jeans and
cell phones is truly bizarre but representative of the '90s.
There is technology amid this apocalypse (enough for a touching
and funny moment when Barlow calls his wife while being
held captive), but it isn't efficient; it's just hodgepodge,
like the military involvement in the Middle East: Maybe
it will help, maybe it's useless.
Filmed in a grainy, sickly bleached film stock in which
colors bleed on screen--an effect both gorgeous and disgusting--Three
Kings rejects both the slickness of a typical Jerry
Bruckheimer shoot-'em-up and the dour, pseudo-documentary
pretension of Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.
The movie is more nerve-wracking and complicated than Private
Ryan, both cinematically and thematically. In Spielberg's
vision of the "good war," motivation and action are grounded
in a broadly accepted morality. In Three Kings, however,
we have total mayhem: "military actions" with muddy economic
objectives, greedy protagonists and occasionally sympathetic
adversaries... and just how are we supposed to feel about
that? Russell understands that we're still sorting it out.
The strength of his movie is not just that it takes jabs
at the motivations of the military, the government, the
media and Saddam himself, but that it subverts the war-movie
and anti-war-movie genres. Even while assaulting us with
sequences that make us cry or cringe in horror, Russell
never preaches; we are moved, but not moved to clarity.
The turmoil of the war is reflected in the confusion, the
simultaneous involvement and detachment in our reaction.
And thankfully, unlike the news-pool coverage of the war
itself, Russell gives us room not just to react but to think.
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Willamette Week | originally
published September 29,
1999
|
