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Starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze, Nora Dunn.
Written and directed by David O. Russell.
It's the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, and the men are waiting to pull out of the desert. The soldiers haven't seen any action, and are bored and restless, spending their time pounding back the booze and shooting enemy soldiers just for the hell of it. Captain Archie Gates (Clooney) is in charge of helping ace TV reporter Cruz (Dunn) cover the stories the army wants covered. Captain Troy Barbeau, whose wife just gave birth to a daughter, came to the Gulf to make some extra money for the baby, and just wants to get home in one piece. Private Vig (Jonze), a dim-witted good-old-boy believing all the anti-Arab propaganda the Army has fed him, is only too anxious to knock a few of them off. Sergeant Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) is a devout Christian who believes God calls his followers to action by putting something in front of them to fulfill. One day, while capturing a bunch of Iraqi soldiers, Vig finds a map hidden in the rectum. Rectum, damn near killed him. The map contains directions to the bunkers where gold bullion that Saddam stole from the Iraqis is being hidden. The four men get up early one morning and take off in a humvee for the bunker. Upon their arrival they find a well, which they enter, and then discover millions in gold bars. Some Iraqi soldiers arrive, but don't seem to care about what the Americans are doing, and actually help them load the bullion into a stolen van. The reason is that Saddam wants the rebel uprising to be quashed, and the Iraqi soldiers figure they will be killed if they don't stamp out the rebels. A fight with Americans wouldn't help - with the signed ceasefire treaty, they reason it's better to let the Americans go on their way. But there's just one problem - the Iraqis start executing villagers in front of the Americans. And the Americans have a dilemma - they don't mind stealing the gold from Saddam and the filthy rich Kuwaitis, but they can't stand seeing innocent Iraqis Bush had pledged to help being slaughtered because the new American policy was to abandon them. Of course, their decision complicates their gold mission, and takes them on journey through the Persian Gulf desert with their new Iraqi comrades. From the director who made the witty satire Flirting With Disaster, Three Kings is a quite irreverent look at the United States' involvement in the Gulf War. It suggests three things. One, while the stated purpose in U.S. involvement was in helping the Kuwaitis get their country back, characters from reporter Cruz to a number of soldiers continually question what the war was really for. An Iraqi soldier, who lost his young son during a bombing raid, gives the answer while questioning and torturing Troy - he holds open the soldier's mouth and pours a quart of oil down Troy's throat. Two, the Army was in the Gulf primarily to present to the press the Army's version of the war, complete with high tech bombing raids and dead wildlife covered in oil. Three, every once in a while morality rears its ugly head. These four soldiers did not set out to help the Iraqis - they just wanted to get rich to make their lives easier at home. But their better selves couldn't stand seeing innocent people being hurt, primarily because "Bush lied to these people" and left them to die at the hands of Saddam's army. The film suggests modern war is not usually about what we are told its about. We are continually lied to, and manipulated by our leaders and the press. No kidding. Filmed in a manner where the desert is a shimmering, bleached white canvas as far as the eye can see, the cinematography lends a disorienting effect to what's going on, mirroring the events going on around them. The script is a curious mixture, with moments of wit and solid drama, and other times unusual plot twists and flat dialogue. One good scene involves the exchange between Troy and his Iraqi torturer expertly humanizes the Iraqi. He too is just a family man who joined the army to make a good life for his loved ones - not the crazy Islamic blind to Saddam's evil that Iraqis are often depicted as. As the saying goes, truth is often the first casualty in war. The cast on paper doesn't look that strong, but acquits itself well. Wahlberg is surprisingly strong as the inexperienced soldier unprepared for what he finds on the desert. Ice Cube continues to impress, playing against type as the decent and loyal soldier without any trace of the usual anger he brings to his characters. Nora Dunn is funny and believable as the vain and ambitious reporter looking to make a reputation out of the misery around her. Clooney is consistently stoic, expressing no pain when he's shot, no anger or panic when things go wrong. The style sometimes works well, such as when he is deciding what to do when the Iraqi soldiers start killing the villagers, but it doesn't always work. Overall, Three Kings is a well-paced, entertaining and thoughtful war movie.   
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