Warner Brothers Presents In Association with Village Roadshow Pictures/Village -- A.M. Film Partnership, A coast Ridge/Atlas Entertainment Production; Executive Produced by Kelley Smith-Wait, Gregory Goodman and Bruce Berman; Produced by Charles Roven, Paul Junger Witt and Edward L. McDonnell; Co-Produced by Douglas Segal and Kim Roth; Story by John Ridley; Written and Directed by David O. Russell
Opens October 1, 1999
Leave it to an independent filmmaker to take a studio film and turn it on its ear. That is what David O. Russell has done -- in all the right ways -- with the Gulf War heist film Three Kings. This is an art house movie for the masses, a flick that takes some brilliant stylistic risks, injects the story with a surprising dose of humor and reinvents the genre in the process.
While the film trailers choose to focus on the heist angle for obvious reasons, this is the sort of film that will surprise audiences from the get-go. The plot starts clicking along right away. Amidst the celebration of the Gulf War Cease Fire, Special Forces Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) learns that three grunts -- new father Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), deeply religious Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) and wide-eyed loose cannon Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) -- have found a map of Saddam Hussein's hidden Kuwaiti gold. Using his muscle, Gates calmly suggests that he and the boys partner up. If they stay focused, they'll grab the gold from a nearby village bunker and be back in camp by lunch.
Initially, things go well, and with the Iraqi army preoccupied by civilian uprisings, our boys are able to find the gold on time and on track. The plan, however, derails when Gates' humanity flares. About to depart with a king's fortune, he and his comrades witness a group of Saddam's soldiers arriving in the local village and holding the populace at gunpoint. Knowing that these villagers are doomed, Gates orders his men to grab the loot and the villagers and make a break for it. In the ensuing stand-off, gun shots are fired and all hell quintessentially breaks loose as our heroes must now grapple with saving their gold and the Iraqi people as well.
This first confrontation between the American soldiers and Saddam's men is a core story point in the film, raising an issue that will be dealt with again and again. As in Vietnam, the U.S. soldiers have fought a war they didn't understand on many levels. First, they were forced to retreat from Baghdad and leave Hussein in power; now, they are being told to pull out of the country for good, leaving the Iraqi populace to stand up to Hussein's Republican Guard on their own. This political and moral element anchors the film firmly as a drama, exploring the rightness of an American government that told the Iraqis to rise up then did nothing to help their cause. Luckily, director Russell is never too heavy-handed with the political grandstanding, making it come from character rather than using his actors to preach for a political cause.
Russell is also smart because he hasn't set out to make an action/war movie per se. As seen through his eyes, this is war with an all-too-human face where nothing is black and white. The first shock you get is in Russell's filmmaking style. The director frankly admits that the way he shot this film was essential to conveying his story of alienated soldiers who are still questioning why they fought this war. So, in the beginning, when the American soldiers are celebrating their ambiguous victory, Russell and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel used a process called bleach bypass, which leaves a layer of silver on the film giving it a distancing, washed-out documentary look and feel.
Later, when our heroes are dealing first hand with the ravages of war, Ektachrome film -- the stock used in still cameras -- creates vivid colors and heightens the surreal landscape. The idea here is to keep the audience as of