16) Three Kings

Three Kings (1999)

Director: David O. Russell

Starring: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze

I've just started reading Geoff King's Indiewood, USA which looks at that area of overlap between the Hollywood studios and the independent sector that emerged in the 1990s. One of the case studies in a later chapter is Three Kings. I'd never seen it before and figured I'd probably get more out of the book if I was familiar with the film he was analysing so when I saw it for sale for $9.95 I decided to pick it up.

Three Kings is set immediately following the signing of the peace treaty ending the Gulf War (the first one). The American soldiers are still in Kuwait, yet to be shipped home. When Sgt. Troy Barlow (Wahlberg) stumbles across a map which is believed to reveal the location of stockpiles of gold stolen from the Kuwaitis by Saddam, Maj. Archie Gates (Clooney) sees an opportunity for to get rich quick before heading home. However, venturing out in pursuit of the gold opens the four soldiers (that's right four, making the title Three Kings a touch confusing) are alerted to the absurdity of the situation in which the USA were leaving the Iraqi people. With a ceasefire having been called, and the Iraqi soldiers under strict orders not to engage with US troops, they had set their focus on taming the unhappy Iraqi locals ("Bush told the people to rise up against Saddam. They thought they'd have our support. They didn't. Now they're getting slaughtered"). The quick, cash-grab plan goes out the window when they break the ceasefire in order to rescue some civilians, and the new mission becomes getting these refugees across the border.

The film started with a slide warning that different visual effects, including distortions of colour, were used in the film to enhance emotional response. I assume that they must have had a spate of people in early screenings being ignorant and complaining that there was something wrong with the print. When I watched the film there were a couple of occasions where they would use some visual technique like a slow motion shot or a distortion of colour, but nothing so obscure that it could be mistaken as accidental.

David O. Russell gives a satiric depiction of war unlike any we've seen since Robert Altman's M*A*S*H. The film is punctuated with darkly comic moments and absurd situations. While the soldiers are searching for the gold they have to wade through the real loot of war; stockpiles of jeans, kitchen appliances, mobile phones and stereos. We have a gung-ho war correspondents standing calmly in the middle of gunfire doing take after take as she stuffs her lines, with the soldiers accepting of her presence and happy to fight around her. However, the film also has its fair share of confronting scenes of violence and torture, so the humour never undermines the horror that is war.

I read a review of this film by Roger Ebert in which he claimed that with Three Kings Russell had announced himself as a major player and compared the film to the best films of Scorsese, Stone, Altman and Tarantino. A bit over a decade later it turns out he may have got a bit ahead of himself. As impressive as Three Kings was, the most notabale thing Russell has done since is I Heart Huckabees which was only a moderate success. By all reports the guy is an A-grade douchebag, having had run ins with a number of actors (including on the set of Three Kings where he reportedly got in a fistfight with Clooney who objected to the way he treated some of the extras), which may go some way to explain him not being able to land any big projects. He's rumoured to be attached to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and according to IMDb in development he has a project listed as 'Untitled Baton Twirling Project' so we'll see what he makes of those.