Three Kings: 7 out of 10: It's the end of the Iraq War (No not that one. The other one that went much better. ) and George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice Cube get wind of an of Kuwaiti gold bullion hidden in an Iraqi village just over the border. Can our troops sneak over and acquire the gold and change their home lives forever?
The Good: There is a lot of good in Three Kings. The three main leads (George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice Cube) are all excellent. The action scenes are well filmed and it is a handsome production.
Three Kings also captures a good sense of the end of the Gulf War with a somewhat surprised American Army more concerned with what to do with all the Iraqi Soldiers surrendering and also wondering what happened to the big war there were supposed to be in that they have just now won with relative ease.
The Bad: Then the plot kicks in... no not the original plot as described above but a brand new plot that tangentially ties into the narrative but makes zero sense considering the motivation of the characters involved. It would be like a James Bond movie where James quits MI6 to go after drug dealers.
What? Hold on a second I am getting a message here. License to Kill? James Bond does what? Bond is suspended from MI6 as he pursues drug lord Franz Sanchez? Why? To avenge the rape and murder of Patricia Barnes from Three's Company? I mean as motivations go it isn't an awful one and honestly its a touch better than what Clooney and company have to work with. But yes it is a bit out of character like that.
There is also some jarring low-end humor in Three Kings. For all the intelligent nods and characterizations you get some unnecessary toilet humor and a southern stereotype so broad it would have been offensive in Birth of a Nation. The "humor", like the second act's heartwarming heel-face turn, simply seems out of place with the rest of the film that is otherwise so well made and tonally consistent.
The Ugly: While it is not quite Rambo 3 with Rambo helping the Mujaheddin, you do have to admit that some of this film plays differently now then it did in the late nineties. Clooney's and the films attack on George Bush (the first one) for not invading Iraq proper and taking out Saddam rings a touch different in hindsight. In fact, the entire plot seems awfully naive.
In Conclusion: There is an old film from my youth that escapes me. In it, one of the guys drowns trying to take to much gold from Davey Jones locker or whatever. Gold is both heavy and expensive. A gold bar weighs about 27 pounds and is worth about half a million dollars. You probably smuggle four or five with relative ease and still be quite wealthy. Do you know what you couldn't do? Easily smuggle five hundred of them. It is a fun movie and often a good story but not one of these idiots has a lick of sense. That is probably why they were so gung-ho to invade Iraq.
The Good: There is a lot of good in Three Kings. The three main leads (George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, and Ice Cube) are all excellent. The action scenes are well filmed and it is a handsome production.
Three Kings also captures a good sense of the end of the Gulf War with a somewhat surprised American Army more concerned with what to do with all the Iraqi Soldiers surrendering and also wondering what happened to the big war there were supposed to be in that they have just now won with relative ease.
The Bad: Then the plot kicks in... no not the original plot as described above but a brand new plot that tangentially ties into the narrative but makes zero sense considering the motivation of the characters involved. It would be like a James Bond movie where James quits MI6 to go after drug dealers.
What? Hold on a second I am getting a message here. License to Kill? James Bond does what? Bond is suspended from MI6 as he pursues drug lord Franz Sanchez? Why? To avenge the rape and murder of Patricia Barnes from Three's Company? I mean as motivations go it isn't an awful one and honestly its a touch better than what Clooney and company have to work with. But yes it is a bit out of character like that.
There is also some jarring low-end humor in Three Kings. For all the intelligent nods and characterizations you get some unnecessary toilet humor and a southern stereotype so broad it would have been offensive in Birth of a Nation. The "humor", like the second act's heartwarming heel-face turn, simply seems out of place with the rest of the film that is otherwise so well made and tonally consistent.
The Ugly: While it is not quite Rambo 3 with Rambo helping the Mujaheddin, you do have to admit that some of this film plays differently now then it did in the late nineties. Clooney's and the films attack on George Bush (the first one) for not invading Iraq proper and taking out Saddam rings a touch different in hindsight. In fact, the entire plot seems awfully naive.
In Conclusion: There is an old film from my youth that escapes me. In it, one of the guys drowns trying to take to much gold from Davey Jones locker or whatever. Gold is both heavy and expensive. A gold bar weighs about 27 pounds and is worth about half a million dollars. You probably smuggle four or five with relative ease and still be quite wealthy. Do you know what you couldn't do? Easily smuggle five hundred of them. It is a fun movie and often a good story but not one of these idiots has a lick of sense. That is probably why they were so gung-ho to invade Iraq.