Three Kings

What’s the Story?

In 1991, U.S. troops, under the first President George Bush, chased Saddam Hussein's army back across the Kuwaiti border, then halted, abandoning the homegrown Iraqi freedom movement once the Kuwaiti oil wells were secure. Saddam Hussein's cease-fire surrender brings jubilation to U.S. forces, who act like frat guys on Spring Break. During the melee, soldiers find a map hidden by a high-ranking captive Iraqi. Special Forces Capt. Archie Gates (George Clooney) deduces the map shows the location of stolen Kuwaiti gold and forms a small raiding-party of three reservists (Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, < a href=" http://www.commonsensemedia.org/reviews/Spike-Jonze">Spike Jonze) to venture past the cease-fire lines to get the loot. Gates is correct about the gold, and Saddam's forces are busy violently crushing uprisings among their own people. But Gates and his men are sickened by the sight of innocent civilians being terrorized. Instead of making a clean getaway they do what the Bush Administration did not; open fire to help the oppressed Iraqi rebels. Now,the accidental freedom-fighters have to race, shoot, and deal their way to safety.

Is It Any Good?

THREE KINGS was filmmaker David O'Russell's scorpion-stingingly cynical take on the American/Coalition military action Operation Desert Storm. Watched today, this gains an extra dimension from the 2003 "Operation Iraqi Freedom" war. Kids who have lived with the controversial second war might be a little confused about the issues that the 1999 film raises. The gore, action, dark humor, and suggestions that "Americans just don't get it" are still pretty applicable, in varying degrees.

The American characters say lines like "The war is over, I don't know what the f--k it was about," and "You guys call America the Great Satan, right?" All while generally exhibiting the sort of self-serving, stupid, and insensitive actions that have given the U.S. a bad name in the Arab-Islamic world. Much criticism is put into the mouth of an otherwise villainous character, an Iraqi military father whose wife was maimed and whose son was killed in U.S. bombing targeted at Saddam. He tortures one of Gates' comrades using what he says was the whole objective of U.S. meddling in Mideast politics: oil.