Three Kings is a bold combination of MASH, Treasure of Sierra Madre, and Dr. Strangelove and is probably the most seriously hilarious war movie ever created. It delves into the strange connection between consumerism and war in the age of cellular phones and Humvees by doing a much better job than the assertion of 1970’s Kelly’s Heroes. One of the most talented filmmakers of the 1990s namely David O. Russell, Three Kings features an unrestrained presentation of personal conscience in the delicate arena of politics.
George Clooney, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and Mark Wahlberg play a team of U.S. soldiers saddened by their experience Desert Storm who try to burglarize $23 million in gold from Saddam Hussein’s army who hijacked the gold from Kuwait. Taking the assets from an Iraqi stronghold is easy; but keeping it is a very lethal matter. However, by the end of their mission, the four can no longer pay a blind eye on wartime brutality and they decide to help Iraqi insurgents abandoned by the indiscriminate wartime policy implemented by Presided George Bush as dictated by their conscience. Although a very serious film, Russell adds a keen sense of the senseless to it, yielding on the film being an exercise of stunning visual cleverness. Despite an ending considered to be conventional for a pertly unique film, Three Kings presents the mad brutality of war while the insanity makes you laugh out loud.
–Jeff Shannon