Three Kings
Frequently, when called upon to list my favorite movies, Three Kings makes it onto my list. And then, inevitably, people will respond with something that they find obvious and I find offensive, comments like, “How can you put it on your list over Braveheart/Good Will Hunting/Trainspotting?!” What can I say? I just love it.
First, it’s compelling. It’s an action movie with great camerawork, a fun soundtrack (I find the entrance to the village to the tune “I Get Around” to be one of the most inspired musical choices in any film), a sense of real importance, great acting, a punchy script, ambitious direction, and a Mark Wahlberg torture scene. What’s not to like?
Second, it’s hilarious. Spike Jonze’s man-crush (perhaps eerily like my own) on Mark Wahlberg is pathetic and endearing (”Troy said this was a bad-ass haircut”), the ongoing discussion of black quarterbacks is resolved when Ice Cube loads a Nerf football with C4, and Clooney’s “many nations” speech is a truly great failed propaganda speeches (then again, I don’t think there are too many failed propaganda speeches in film…maybe this is what makes Clooney’s so good). Even Saïd Taghmaoui’s character, as he electrocutes Mark Wahlberg and forces him to drink crude oil, is bizarrely funny. His thoughs on Michael Jackson, his use of the phrase “my main man,” and his cruel sense of humor (”I’m not a father anymore. My son is dead.”) make you want to laugh and cry at the same time…but in a good way.
Last, it’s got substance. A story of morally bereft American soldiers during the first Iraq war, the film traces their steps as they plan and botch a gold heist, eventually becoming the hesitant guardians of defenseless Iraqi rebels who are attempting to fight against Saddam Hussein’s regime (only to be abandoned by the American military as they begin to resist). It’s informative, an alternative look at the situation in Iraq in the early 90s, and very carefully unpacks the moral, political, and human implications of America’s involvement in that region.
Simply, it does it for me on a variety of levels. Most movies attempting to navigate a terrain like this would fall into a sense of self-importance, or would sacrifice complexity for false emotional payoffs. I think Three Kings manages to be both emotionally and morally true while allowing for the possibility of real redemption and transcendence, not the kind we have started to assume Hollywood will force-feed us (nobody gets any medals, that’s for sure).
The on-set problems (Clooney and director David O. Russell famously clashed) seem to have only enhanced the sense of urgency and heightened the comedic and dramatic tension, because the whole film runs on adrenaline and crackles with the runaway energy of a train whose inertia refuses to be slowed. There’s a shot where Mark Wahlberg, looking at a suitcase of gold, announces that he’s going to go get a truck. Before he can get the line out properly, he smiles and clumsily falls out of frame. This is of course a goof, a line that Wahlberg stumbled over, but the sense of loose joy, the rambling, improvisational glee, captures both the spirit of the film and the anything goes attitude that many of the soldiers in that war (perhaps foolishly) possessed.
David O. Russell has since become infamous for alienating and abusing his actors (on the set of I Heart Huckabees he brutally verbally attacked Lily Tomlin and there are reports that he stripped down to his underwear while directing Naomi Watts). If all of his movies can be as good as Three Kings, I’m almost convinced that it’s worth it.