Rating of
3/4
"Three Kings" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 12/27/11
When a group of US soldiers find a map to Saddam's horde of stolen Kuwaiti gold during operation Desert Storm, they decide to go rogue and steal it. Kind of like a cross between Ocean's Eleven and Jarhead, Three Kings is the Iraq "war"'s answer to Kelly's Heroes. Featuring a fine cast and nicely offbeat script, the film starts off really well with plenty of laughs and surreal situations based within the usual "absurdity of war" framework, but when the script decides to throw in some politics it starts to flounder somewhat. There are some valid points made and it's all very well meaning, but Russell's fear of putting the boot in compromises the message and it all ends up a little half-arsed. The worst example is the fact that the point that America was bombing Iraqi civilians pretty much purely for the purposes of its own fat cat oil companies (a perfectly valid one) was made by the guy who was torturing our hero torpedoes any moral impact it may have had. Add the fact that their redemption at the end feels very contrived and unconvincing and you walk away from the film feeling a little cheated. Having said all that, it's a fun military heist movie with plenty of laughs and action and as a whole is pretty damn entertaining. It's just a shame that what should have been the meat of the story was shuffled off onto the back burner.
