September 30–October 7, 1999

movie shorts

Three Kings

Directed by David O. Russell
A Warner Bros. release

Recommended

In war movies, guns are fired all the time. You see what happens on the outside: blood spurts, faces contort, handheld cameras zig and zag, explosion effects create aesthetic chaos. You don’t see what happens inside: The bullet rushes forward, then lodges in mangled pink tissue. Dark blood and puke-green bile accumulate. Organs convulse. It’s visceral and immediate. It’s surreal and nasty. And it’s what you see when guns are fired in David O. Russell’s Three Kings.

Three Kings doesn’t start out as your typical war movie. Set at the end of the Gulf War, March 1991, it takes the unusual step for a Hollywood movie of criticizing U.S. policy — it frankly says the war was about oil, not freeing Kuwait — and shows U.S. soldiers who are bored and confused. The scene is the Iraqi desert, where an Army squad is patrolling when they hear that the war has been "won" (by smart bombs and computers). They’re used to waiting — for orders, action, a reason to be there — and now they’re waiting again, to see what happens next.

Traipsing over the hard, dry terrain is Sergeant Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), on patrol with his buddy Private Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze, director of videos for the Beastie Boys’ "Sabotage" and Weezer’s "Buddy Holly"). They spot an Iraqi soldier in the distance: He seems to be waving a white flag and carrying a gun. Troy yells out, "Are we shooting people or what?" No one seems to know. Boom! Troy shoots anyway. The Iraqi’s head explodes. "Congratulations, my man," someone says. "You shot yourself a rag-head!" The guys run up to get a picture, and Troy is captured in the snapshot, forever grimacing.

These first few minutes are irreverent and compelling, reminiscent of Kubrick’s relentlessly brutal Paths of Glory or Full Metal Jacket. The "American boys" in Three Kings aren’t particularly honorable or motivated; they’re not fighting for freedom or saving anyone. They’re confused kids, unsure how to respond to the first deadly violence they’ve knowingly committed and witnessed. Mostly working class and undereducated, they’re about to return to a mundane stateside reality.

Uncertain, but wanting to believe they’ve done a good thing, they celebrate the war’s conclusion. Back at the base, they party like madmen, waving weapons, dancing on tanks and tables, fucking whomever they can. The camera freezes each protagonist in mid-antic, defines them in a phrase: Troy is "a new father"; Conrad never finished high school and "wants to be Troy Barlow"; Staff Sergeant Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) is an airport baggage handler, "on a four-month paid vacation from Detroit"; and Green Beret Captain Archie Gates (George Clooney), who has made the Army his career, is fed up, scheduled to retire in two weeks.

The plot begins when these guys find a map (tellingly, in an enemy soldier’s ass) to a stash of gold bullion Saddam has stolen from Kuwait. Determined to leave the Gulf with something to show for their troubles, they go AWOL, steal a Humvee and head off down the road.

Once at their destination, however, the four hit a snag, morality-wise: they see Royal Guard soldiers torturing and murdering Iraqi men, women and children, anyone who even thought about resisting Saddam. Intent on their mission, or on survival, they all ignore the U.S. soldiers walking off with suitcases full of gold.

Archie sees the dilemma first. He and his men are about to be rich beyond their wildest dreams, but here are people being mutilated and killed: people the Bush administration has pledged to protect. Archie’s admonished his men to not get involved or fire their weapons (it’s his description of bullet damage that inspires the earlier bile imagery, filmed on an actual human cadaver), but now he’s wondering whether they should help the refugees, even save their lives. The Royal Guard shoots a woman in the head — she falls, her daughter wails. The decision is made. Archie aims his gun at one of the bad guys. Someone shoots someone else. Slow motion shows the exploding flesh and blood. Then everyone starts shooting. Bullets enter bodies: surreal bile and blood fill up the screen.

With this shift in terms, Three Kings kicks into a more familiar mode, establishing unmistakable moral ground for our reluctant heroes: When the smoke clears, they hurry the refugees into vehicles and speed off down the road. But the dilemma ends up being more complicated than this burst of action implies. The line between the bad guys (the Royal Guard) and the good guys (U.S. liberators) blurs, as the film compares their similar disregard for human lives and definitions of "winning."

Perhaps the most unsettling and incisive moment comes when Troy is captured and tortured by a young Iraqi captain, Said (Said Taghmaoui, from Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine). Attaching electrodes to Troy’s head and ears, Said begins his interrogation by asking, "What is the problem with Michael Jackson?" Troy doesn’t get it: He offers the most common response in the U.S., that the King of Pop is crazy, an individual with problems. But Said knows better: "He’s Pop King of sick fucking country," a country that "makes the black man hate himself."

When Troy refuses to answer Said’s further questions, Said’s men throw the switch and Troy spasms: his face goes red and dark, his teeth grind, his veins pop out. It’s awful, and Said winces. The line between right and wrong isn’t easy to see.

But the film can’t sustain this tension, so it cuts back to Archie, Chief and Conrad (now working with the refugees in exchange for an escort to the Iranian border), as they come up with a plan to rescue their man. The movie has to conclude somehow, to extricate itself from its messy dilemmas, re-establish sympathy for the protagonists through heroic feats and requisite tragedies. It imagines that motivated individuals can overcome idiotic policies (like abandoning the Iraqi civilians to Saddam’s vengeance) and that the press — selfless and brave — can have an effect on military outcomes. But for a minute, before it rushes to its uplifting resolution, Three Kings is conflicted and harsh. And for that minute, it’s a remarkable thing, a war movie that’s hard to watch.

—Cindy Fuchs