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Buy The Video When the 1999 Academy Award nominations were announced Three Kings was completely overlooked. That's a shame because Three Kings was not only one of the year's best movies, it's one of the best anti-war movies ever made. Combining action, comedy, and political satire, it marks writer-director David O. Russell (Spanking the Monkey, Flirting With Disaster) as one of the most versatile directors working today. While many of today's hot directors are all style and no substance, Russell has made a film that not only looks incredible on the surface, it has a brain and heart behind it as well. Set at the end of the Persian Gulf War, Three Kings starts off as a heist comedy about a group of soldiers who attempt to steal gold bullion that Hussein's troops have stolen from Kuwait. Of course, everything does not go off as planned and along the way the soldiers are forced to confront the reasons they were sent over there in the first place. Was it greed for oil, as an Iraqi soldier claims in a harrowing sequence as he tortures young American recruit Troy Barlow -- played by Mark Wahlberg (Boogie Nights) in another surprisingly sensitive, nuanced performance that should make people forget his days as Marky Mark once and for all? Or were Americans defending freedom, as the politicians claimed? Like most of the troubling questions raised by the film the answer is not always clear. "Are we shooting people?" Barlow asks in the very first scene in the bleached out, sun-drenched Iraqi desert before shooting an Iraqi soldier. It's one of many scenes when we are confronted with the fact that war makes otherwise good people do terrible things. Russell never shies away from making us confront such ugly aspects of war, even going so far as taking the camera into the human body to show what happens when someone is shot. But unlike Saving Private Ryan, which also didn't shy away from showing what bullets could do to bodies, Three Kings doesn't demonize the "enemy." No American film has ever had such well-rounded and complex Arab characters. The film is full of the absurdist, comic touches that made Russell's other films, which also dealt with sensitive subjects, so enjoyable to watch. When Barlow chastises his fellow soldier Conrad Vig (played by Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze in a wonderful performance) for being insensitive toward Iraqi prisoners of war, he demonstrates the correct way of talking to them by saying politely, "Disrobe like all the other towel heads." Ambitious war correspondent Adriana Cruz (Nora Dunn) remains icy through all her encounters with the horrors of war until she comes upon some ducks caught in an oil slick and bursts into tears. But as entertaining as the witty dialogue and edge-of-your-seat action sequences are, Three Kings expects you do something you may not be accustomed to doing while watching your average Hollywood film. It expects you to think. The DVD version of Three Kings is remarkable. It contains a very smart audio commentary by the director and a separate track from the producers as well; a host of deleted scenes, including a wonderful sequence where the soldiers extract drinking water from snow globes depicting the Three Wise Men; and an interview with cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel (The Usual Suspects) who describes in detail the experimental techniques used in the film. Also included is a video journal shot by Russell about the surreal and scary process of getting a film made before shooting starts and a hilarious tongue-in-cheek short called An Intimate Look Inside the Acting Process With Ice Cube directed by Spike Jonze. -- Al Weisel |
