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Three Kings review
THREE KINGS
Running time: 115 mins
Starring: George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Spike Jonze
It's March, 1991, in the Iraqi desert when US Army Sergeant Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), Staff Sergeant Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) and Private Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) get wind of a treasure map detailing the bunker-stowed cache of gold bullion, swiped by Saddam from Kuwait.
Roguish, cynical Special Forces Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) catches the boys with the map and - eyes similarly lit by the prospect of a gleaming hoard - spots the potential of a post-Gulf War bonus before de-mobbing back home.
Frustrated by large periods of inaction, the mis-matched quartet swiftly embark on a wholly unauthorised and wildly questionable venture to find illicit fortune in the desert, but are brought face to face with the legacy of America's intervention, in the shattered lives of the native population they came to save.
It's a flash, stylised and visually arresting film, it takes the war movie and veers off wildly, and such risk-taking innovation ought - from a technical point of deserves to be applauded.
Clooney is an entirely watchable as ever, Cube affects a welcome change of pace, Wahlberg is again solid and Jonze displays another string to a bow which also includes directing surreal, upcoming comedy Being John Malkovich and looning around in Fatboy Slim videos. And Clooney has also been around the block a few times and is no fool.
The most engaging part of the film is the scene where the soldiers choose between running off with their gold or staying to defend the ordinary Iraqi's who are brutally abused by the Iraqi army.
The journey from this point on is gripping. You leave the cinema feeling that you have been brought closer to some of the real issues which happened during the Gulf War.
