Three Kings
Early in Three Kings, which I finally got around to seeing last night, George Clooney’s character explains to a soldier complaining about not having seen any action in the Gulf War exactly what happens when a person is shot. Director David Russell illustrates Clooney’s explanation with literally gut-wrenching shots of punctured lungs and livers. This lesson pays off in every subsequent gunfight in the film, because the audience is excruciatingly aware of what each of those bullets is doing. There has perhaps never been another war film with a less casual attitude towards violence.
The film’s backdrop is one of the most shameful episodes in recent American history - Saddam Hussein’s crushing of the Shi’ite uprising at the end of the Gulf War after the rebels had been promised American aid. A film should have been made about this period, and this would be a great one if it weren’t for the ending. SPOILERS FOLLOW….
If you’re going to make a gritty film about Bush 41’s betrayal of the Shi’ite rebellion, you can’t give it a glorious Hollywood ending, but that’s exactly what happens. The refugees are escorted to the Iranian border safely, and they thank their American saviors. Given the way the film had progressed to that point, I was prepared for them to be brutally executed by the Iraqis.
Even if Russell (who also wrote the film) couldn’t bear to kill more defenseless people, he could at least have made the American heroes face the consequences for their insubordination. Instead, he invented a half-baked resolution wherein media coverage of their heroism earns them an honorable discharge.
There’s something insensitive about all this. Schindler’s List was a true story - if it weren’t, I think a book and film called The German Industrialist Who Saved Some Jews would be received poorly, though I can’t put my finger on why, exactly. A fantasy in which the government does the right thing where in reality they didn’t is a weak substitute for real reparations.