I have no problem with the assertion that spoonfeeding is the only way to get the truth to the American public. I become a little antsy, however, around anyone who volunteers to do that spoonfeeding.
In writing Three Kings, David O. Russell assumed the unenviable burden of spelling out the implications of Desert Storm for the American public. Thanks to some extremely self-aggrandizing interviews that play over the final credits, we have Russell's word for it (and the word of the entire cast, it seems) that Three Kings is a very smart movie that does an excellent job of telling the movie going public what Operation Desert Storm was all about.
I guess I'm a pretty irresponsible viewer. I have been known to forget that films are smart even though the people who contributed to making them have told me how smart they are. I'm afraid I'm going to keep forgetting how smart Three Kings apparently was throughout this review. But clearly that's my own problem, as the film has taken tremendous pains to impress upon all of us that it is, indisputably, a smart film.
Three Kings is a thinly disguised remake of Kelly's Heroes, a vastly superior (but still not great) film about an American soldier in World War II who learns about a stash of gold behind enemy lines and convinces his companions to go AWOL and steal the bullion.
Three Kings, on the other hand, is a film about an American soldier in Operation Desert Storm who learns about a stash of gold behind enemy lines and convinces his companions to go AWOL and steal the bullion.
Where Kelly's Heroes gave us Clint Eastwood in the lead, we get George Clooney in Three Kings. And anyone capable of calibrating the charismatic differential between Eastwood in 1970 and Clooney in 1999 can just apply the same differential to everything else in the film, from direction to cinematography to dialogue.
If Clooney is Eastwood-lite (and let's be honest, he's Eastwood-ultralite at best), then Three Kings is Kelly's Heroes-lite. If you came to this review seeking advice, I don't know how to make it any simpler than this: Skip the rest of the review and rent Kelly's Heroes instead of (and with no intention of ever seeing) Three Kings.
But if you came to this review because you're hellbent on watching Three Kings anyway and you would like to know what to look for, I'll be happy to oblige.
Although Clooney plays an American soldier named Archie Gates who is contemplating the--gasp!--unthinkable crime of stealing gold from the universally respected and admired Saddam Hussein, he turns out to be a guy with a heart (need I say 'of gold'?) who becomes more interested in standing up for the oppressed Iraqis than in lining his own coffers with bullion. On the way to his moral redemption, we get to watch his companion Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) discover some important truths about democracy and global stability and the price of oil.
Donnie Wahlberg might have been more appropriate for this film than Mark, since Troy Barlow's purpose is to serve as the symbol of the deluded American populace (and since I think the inexplicable popularity of New Kids on the Block speaks more to our cultural delusions than our passing interest in Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch). Be that as it may, when Wahlberg learns that there are Iraqis that hate Saddam Hussein, he is puzzled. When he finds out that innocent Iraqis have been killed by American missiles, he looks puzzled. When he learns that oppressed people are being tortured by Hussein's troops and that his job as an American soldier is not to interfere, he looks puzzled.
But since he is made of no sterner stuff than the average materialistic American, looking puzzled is about the extent of his moral outrage . . . until he is strapped into the torturer's chair. Copper wiring is placed around his neck and looped over his ears and attached to a generator that will only be turned on when the answers that he gives to his Iraqi interrogator are wrongheaded enough to warrant a correction. When he explains that the purpose of Operation Desert Storm was to "stabilize the region" and "save Kuwaitis," he is given an electric shock. It's a somewhat painful--if accurate--metaphor for what has to be done in order to get the truth through the perhaps unbreachably thick skull of the American public.
And I'm sure that it's a great metaphor for what the people of other nations would like to do to us when we talk about world politics from our incredibly provincial perspective. I don't think Russell is wrong to suggest that Americans have to be tortured into seeing the truth about themselves and the world. I just don't think his metaphor is very interesting.
And then it gets downright heavy-handed. The interrogator asks Troy Vincent why the Americans were so interested in helping the Kuwaitis. "We help oppressed people all over the world," says Vincent idiotically. But instead of being shocked for his egregiously wrongheaded response, he is spoonfed the truth.
Literally.
The lid of a CD jewel box is jammed into his mouth and cracked into a makeshift funnel down which the inquisitor pours oil.
You see how clever that is? We have to have the truth poured directly down our throats before we know what it tastes like. If you doubt that the metaphor is clever, by all means stick around for the final credits, during which the undeniability of its cleverness will be made abundantly clear. Wahlberg himself does an interview in which he explains the important work that Three Kings does so far as enlightening the American public is concerned.
See there? Not only did the character learn his lesson; the actor did too. Doubtless this film has helped to spread the truth concerning global politics like so much wildfire. I'm sure that if I only showed it to my Republican father, he would proclaim to all within hearing that he had seen the light and that perhaps the United States army had been used as a sort of corporate police force.
But that would only mean that the army is corrupt, not the soldiers. Don't assume that institutional corruption implies individual corruption. Consider, for instance, Archie Gates, who rescues a whole bunch of helpless Iraqis.
Now, admittedly, he only became involved with the Iraqis because he was trying to steal $23 million in gold bullion. And admittedly, he had no choice but to help them since he needed them to help him carry the gold. And admittedly, they could very easily have killed him and his soldier pals and kept the gold for themselves.
But let's not lose sight of the fact that he does the right thing and helps the Iraqis and loses the gold in the process. Any argument about how he's sort of trapped by circumstances into doing the right thing would obviously be downright unAmerican. No, he's definitely a good guy, which just goes to show that the individual can transcend the institution that tries to contain him. And what sentiment could be more American than that?
It's taken me a while to figure it out, but I think I know who this movie is for. It's not for people who realize that world politics is nothing but an arena of thugs and that some thugs manage to strike convincing poses as saviors. Three Kings can't tell those people anything they don't already know. But it's also not for people who believe in the unsullied dignity of America, for they aren't prepared to hear the message of Three Kings until they are themselves literally hooked up to a generator (if metaphor came naturally to such folks, they wouldn't insist on reading their Bibles so literally). So I'm sort of thinking the movie is for David O. Russell and the others who worked on it.
It's a film that helps the folks who already see the worm-infested underbelly of global politics to congratulate themselves about their cynicism.
When restless American footsoldiers left out of Operation Desert Storm's high-tech warfare go on a renegade missions to loot $23 million in Iraqi gold...More at HotMovieSale.com
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