Year:
1999
Studio:
Warner Brothers/Village Roadshow Pictures
Movie:
3/5
DVD:
4/5
Teaser
At the end of Desert Storm, three US soldiers -- Major Archie Gates
(George Clooney), Sergeant Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg), and Sergeant
Chief Elgin (Ice Cub) -- travel 60 kilometers into Iraq to retrieve a
cache of gold stolen from the Kuwaitis. Retrieve it for themselves that
is. Once there though, they find that it's impossible to turn your
backs on a people being brutally oppressed by Saddam's regime.
Movie
Like The Three Musketeers, there are four soldiers that undertake this
mission. It's just that Private Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) is more of a
not bright underling and gets stuck doing things like guarding the
Humvee. I guess if you wanted to compare this movie, it's like Kelly's
Heroes if the gold had been hidden next to a Nazi Concentration Camp.
It definitely has a certain look to it, which is discussed at length in
the commentaries. They purposely shot a lot of it with different than
normal films and used processing methods designed to make the colors a
bit weird in certain scenes. The director also comments on how this is
a sort of anti-war movie though it looks more like a "why didn't we do
more" movie than an anti-war movie.
Actors
George Clooney is another contender for Big Box Office Mega Star, but
like Brad Pitt and others before him he doesn't generally take those
kinds of roles. Whatever happened to the Action Hero Arnold
Schwarzenegger types who were content to stay in that niche and rake in
the bucks? Now everybody wants to be a "serious" actor which is why all
these "next big thing" stars sort of go nowhere. Sure they keep doing
films and do it well, but not high profile films so people no longer
think of them in that bigger than big way.
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In any case,
Clooney did a good job, especially since he had to also
work on ER four days out of the week. Wahlberg has come a long way
since his New Kids on the Block days and has established himself as a
real actor. Ice Cube joins a seemingly long line of rap star movie
actors that are only fair actors.
DVD
There are two commentary tracks, one with Director David O Russell and
the other with Producers Charles Roven and Ed McDonnell. Both
commentaries are fairly interesting, talking about a lot of the behind
the scenes stuff like how they came to be involved and the difficulties
they went through making this film. Both are also rather too self
congratulatory for my tastes. Hey, doing better than expected in the
box office doesn't necessarily mean that everything you did was right
and everybody else was wrong.
There is a Cast and Crew list (no bios). The Production Notes pretty
much go over the same material covered in the commentaries. There is a
21-minute "Under the Bunker: On the Set of Three Kings" documentary
which is fairly good. Production Designer Catherine Hardwicke takes us
on a 10-minute tour of the Three Kings sets. There is a 13-minute
segment of David O Rusell's video diary dealing with the making of
Three Kings. Three or four deleted scenes that wouldn't have made much
of a difference in the movie. There is a 7-minute interview with
Director of Photography Newton Thomas Sigel. Also a parody bit shot by
Spike Jonez: a 2-minute segment on Ice Cube's acting process. A bunch
of on the set photographs and the theatrical trailer round out the
extras.
Recommendations
It's a good enough movie to recommend. The DVD is certainly quite good.
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