Three Kings (6 May 2005)
When David O. Russell's "I ? Huckabees" came out, many were distinctly unimpressed by it even in spite of its very quirky episodical premise. Some compared it with Russell's earlier "Three Kings" and confessed to being thrown off the loop. I now see what they probably meant. I have not seen Huckabees, but Three Kings came very close to making a good impression on me. Three Kings is perhaps, and will probably remain for a while, the only fictional satire based on the United States' engagements with Iraq. It attempts to turn the motive for war on its head and focuses on the soldiers in Iraq and what they see and compute from their military exercise. I wish though, that it went the whole length in trying to subvert the war-as-a-necessary-evil and the positive-sum game themes. Instead, Russell chickened out at the very end to put a purely commercially oriented spin on the whole movie replete with it-was-not-as-bad-as-you-thought epilogues to the climactic conclusion. As usual, George Clooney was brilliant in his role. Mark Wahlberg just passed muster, but the star was Spike Jonze who plays the "redneck" effortlessly.