Picturenose

Kings for a day?

I was clearly in trouble. The take away food had been ordered, the beers were in the fridge and I sat my good lady down in order to treat her to a screening of David O. Russell’s Three Kings (1999). It was partly her choice - she said something about George Clooney and, after allowing her a few moments reflection, I thew a bucket of cold water over her and she was back to normal. I knew there was something wrong when she spent the first fifteen minutes with her face in her hands - this is, after all, not a movie many people would like to watch while eating.

It has a cast with something for everyone. George Clooney, of course, alongside Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube and a really competent performance from Spike Jonze, the director of Being John Malkovich (1999). The balance of their characters lends itself very well to illustrate the many points raised in this, one of the best anti-war movies since Mike Nichol’s Catch 22 (1970).

Three Kings is set in Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Saddam Hussein’s forces and Republican Guard are busy wreaking their revenge on those Iraqis who had sided with the US forces following the invasion of Kuwait and the Americans, who are in the process of withdrawal are under strict instructions to not get involved and to observe the ceasefire. Some hope.

The plot is a fairly basic buddy-buddy movie. A group of soldiers find a map to hidden Kuwaiti gold, hidden in a prisoner of war’s arse. Major Archie Gates (Clooney) hears of this and decides to put an attractive proposition to the men who have the map. Steal the gold, get it across the Iraq/Iran border and retire to the easy life. The war is over and nobody will stop them - what could be easier?

It would probably have been a walk in the park, but the plan soon goes very wrong, very quickly. Once the gold is safely stashed in a “liberated” van, the group’s first test of conscience presents itself. The Iraqi Hussein loyalists are starving and torturing dissident villagers and our heroes must decide whether to help or to cut and run. After much soul-searching, they opt for the former - and this is where the plan begins to fall to pieces.

The camera work is very quirky and more than a little disturbing, using a mix of grainy footage, lurid technicolor shots of the effects of a bullet on the human body and extreme slow motion. This, coupled with a well-chosen soundtrack really, does convey the urgency and mayhem in post-invasion Iraq.

The characters successfully humanize both the Americans and Iraqis, portraying them all as human beings, not simply targets or aggressors. The almost incredible situation these people find themselves in is beautifully portrayed and the clever, witty and poignant script simply adds to the sense of horror and disbelief. Some may find the mix of shock, rhetoric, horror and comedy a little hard to take - particularly alonside the disorienting camerawork and the sometimes-thumping soundtrack - but I would recommend you give it a go. If it helps, my good lady ended up loving it.

Make no mistake, Three Kings is strictly an anti-war movie, and not simply anti-Iraqi. Nobody comes out of the sorry mess looking decent and wholesome, just human - and that is where the true horror lies. As Major Gates says near the beginning of the movie: “What have we done here?”

114 mins.