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 "Three Kings" dissapointed me, but it certainly does give it a decent effort in trying to tell it's off-center tale. The picture wants to be both things: an all-out action film with spectacular stunts and explosions, and a moral drama about the gulf war. Not only that, there's elements of dark comedy that I certainly wasn't entertained by. The story goes a little something like this: a band of soldiers(Clooney's Archie Gates, Mark Whalberg's Troy Barlow, Ice Cube's Sgt. Elgin and Spike Jonze's annoying Conrad Vig, find a map(in a very odd place) that leads to a massive amount of stolen Kuwaiti gold. Gates finds a way to ditch the reporter who he's escorting through the war, and the group sets off to find gold, but what they find is far different. The group blasts tunes as they fly across the desert, throwing footballs attached to C-4 explosives through the air. Although it's all about the gold, they soon find themselves helping the local people who are being terrorized and killed by the Iraqi soldiers. The drama didn't work for me simply because I could almost feel the movie wanting to throw in more action during the dramatic portions. If this movie didn't want to be an action film, I doubt it would stop for slow motion shots of exploding cars spiraling through the air. Beyond that even, I didn't really care for these characters. Ice Cube's performance was the most interesting for me, and also the least cartoonish. Clooney has a fairly good performance here, but it's not nearly as good as his performance in "Out Of Sight". Mark Whalberg begins to have some interesting scenes, but the movie only touches the surface of possibility for not only him, but the majority of characters involved. Last and certainly least, director Spike Jonze gets stuck with an annoying, whinny stereotype of a character as Vig. Nora Dunn plays the reporter who follows the soldiers around. Not only she is an annoyance to the characters, but I couldn't wait till her character left each scene. The film has a fascinating, high-energy visual quality from ace cinematographer Newton Thomas Siegel(whose work in "The Usual Suspects" I still find fascinating; in "Fallen", his work was the star of the film as far as I'm concerned). When the camera is still(or at least close), the images of the vast expanse of the desert are breathtaking. Unfortunately(and I don't know whose idea this was), the camera never stops in this film. There's constant zooms, pans, motions. Some may have found the constant motion in "The Blair Witch Project" made them ill, but for some reason I was fine with it. The constant motion in "Three Kings"(in addition to the gross diagrams showing the effects of a bullet on a human body) made me a bit ill. If anything, I was more impressed here by the style than the substance. The only problem with that is that the style here is so overpowering as to subtract ever further from any message that the film is trying to state. The film is simply hyperactive to the point of being frustrating. We spend fractions of a moment here, fractions of a moment there- Russell never stops to build to any sort of a conclusion in most of these pieces, and after awhile, I just gave up and let the movie wash over me visually and explode around me as the DTS Digital sound system hammered me with wave after wave of bass. Occasionally the picture does manage to come up with an interesting idea or scene, but it doesn't have the patience to stay with anything for more than a second(sometimes literally). I haven't enjoyed director David O. Russell's first two films and although this film has it's moments, it's more style than substance. It's all presented in a fresh way, but I still felt that this film did not work. ** 1/2 BACK TO THE SITE: Listing Of DVD Special Sales Back To A Guide To Current Film A List Of Current/Upcoming DVD For Sale A Guide To Current Box Office |