Three stars team up for this unusual look at America's role in the war against Iraq. In 1991, as the Gulf War winds to a close, three American servicemen find themselves happy to have achieved victory but wondering about the ultimate importance of what they've done (especially since Saddam Hussein is still in power). Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) is a decorated Vietnam veteran and special forces officer with two weeks to go before he retires; Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) has a new baby at home; and Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) is probably just going to end up back in Detroit. So when one of them comes across a map that seems to point out where Saddam's forces have stashed a large cache of gold they stole from Kuwait, they decide to follow the trail and take some of the war booty for themselves. However, the deeper they journey into Iraq, the more they see of the consequences of America's policies in the Middle East. Although President George Bush and the American military urged Iraqi citizens to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and pledged their support to a people's movement against the leader, Iraqis found that when they took to the streets against Saddam, the United States did not back them up, and the loss of Iraqi lives was fearsome. When Gates, Barlow and Elgin become aware of what's happening, they're torn between their desire to grab the fortune they came for and the demands of their conscience to help the people they came to liberate. Three Kings was directed by David O. Russell and marked a significant change of direction after his dark-humored relationship comedies, Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Review
Though its subject matter was a risky endeavor, Three Kings has the surprise visceral impact of a scud missile fired at close range. Director David O. Russell attacked a subject with dubious luster, possibly better suited to the topical realm of TV movies, and crafted one of the more visually arresting films of 1999. Russell's bag of tricks includes following a bullet into a human abdomen, sight and sound distortion during battlefield chaos, a POV of a dazed soldier watching his own life being saved, and the kind of gritty film stock that brings each individual fleck of sand into focus. Accompanying these is an equally offbeat perspective on what made the war such a disjointed and foreign experience for those involved: they may as well have been on Mars. "Are we shooting people or what?" yells Mark Wahlberg's Troy Barlow during the film's tone-setting opener, as a tired Iraqi on a nearby hill waves his weapon half-heartedly, with ambiguous intent. Barlow rips the guy's throat open with a slug, for lack of any guiding policy, either moral or military. Barlow and his eventual band of marauders, including (George Clooney, Ice Cube and, in a memorable acting breakthrough, Being John Malkovich director Spike Jonze), only put a human face on these Iraqis when they stumble into a civil strife in which a woman is brutally executed. For all the humor of the absurd vignettes that propel the film, Three Kings also taps into a shock wave of human emotion -- guaranteeing that it will linger in the viewer's consciousness far longer than that forgotten conflict in the desert. ~ Derek Armstrong, Rovi
Jann K. Engel - Art Director, Derek R. Hill - Supervising Art Director, Alan Glazer - Associate Producer, Mary Vernieu - Casting, Anne McCarthy - Casting, Douglas Segal - Co-producer, John Ridley - Co-producer, Kim Roth - Co-producer, Kym Barrett - Costume Designer, Julian Wall - First Assistant Director, David O. Russell - Director, Dan Bradley - Second Unit Director, Robert Lambert - Editor, Gregory Goodman - Executive Producer, Kelley Smith-Wait - Executive Producer, Bruce Berman - Executive Producer, Carter Burwell - Composer (Music Score), Richard Wolf - Musical Arrangement, Ralph Sall - Musical Direction/Supervision, Catherine Hardwicke - Production Designer, Newton Thomas Sigel - Cinematographer, Charles Roven - Producer, Paul Junger Witt - Producer, Edward L. McDonnell - Producer, Gene Serdena - Set Designer, Edward Tise - Sound/Sound Designer, John Leveque - Sound Editor, Dan Bradley - Stunts Coordinator, John Ridley - Screen Story, David O. Russell - Screenwriter, Philip Pfeiffer - Second Unit Camera, Bruce Fortune - Supervising Sound Editor, Lisa Satriano - Second Unit Assistant Director
