the soldiers of three kings have taken their cue from movies about vietnam . 
 ( fitting , since the media-saturated gulf war became a pop entertainment . ) 
while driving through a long , flat iraqi desert ( in a humvee with a bart simpson hood ornament ) , one of the men under special forces sgt . 
maj . archie gates' ( who's steering ) command requests a beach boys tune . 
these men want their apocalypse now moment , only instead of surfing , they bop to the music and skeet shoot out the back of the vehicle , armed with automatic rifles . 
our three kings ( okay , four ) are good fighters , but they don't necessarily take operation desert storm seriously-it's a reprieve from their hellish day jobs . 
they are gates , new father sgt . 
troy barlow ( wahlberg ) , sgt . 
chief elgin ( cube ) , and pvt . 
conrad vig ( music video director jonze ) . 
at story's start , president bush has declared a ceasefire , and american troops are tying up loose ends . 
barlow , elgin , and vig discover during a round up of iraqi captives an " ass-map " that points to a bunker filled with gold bullion . 
gates leaves his jurisdiction to commandeer the situation ; he proposes-demands-that barlow , elgin , and vig join him on a treasure hunt . 
ditching his escort , a relentless reporter named adriana cruz ( nora dunn ) , is easy . 
so is finding the treasure , until the four men realize the magnitude of discord still breathing in iraq : saddam's men are threatening the dictator's detractors ( citizens of his own country ) with violence . 
when gates and company arrive at the bunker with a stolen truck , ready to loot , the unarmed rebels want help . 
 ( bush encouraged them to rise up against the government , but provided no military support for such cause . ) 
gates convinces the vault's guards that this is a post-war mission , and even accepts their assistance in loading the truck . 
the situation could go off without a hitch : the former enemies bear no grudges . 
but the money hungry gates has a conscience , and when one female bystander is shot by a sadistic grunt before these americans have left the scene , he orders barlow , elgin and vig to open fire on the surrounding arab forces . 
the result : barlow is kidnapped , and the filmmakers imply that these would-be kings are seeing more action than they ever did during wartime . 
barlow is eventually locked in a dank room and wired up to a shocking device . 
his interrogator lost his family to the bombs , and he wants barlow to imagine the demise of his own wife and child . 
 ( he does , in chilling , lasting images . ) 
i liked these scenes best , because the political became personal . 
it's one thing to champion the plight of thousands ; it's another to see a ceiling cave in atop a baby in a crib . 
russell has shocked us before : his first film , spanking the monkey , is about a young man's affair with his bedridden mother . 
 ( it's great . ) 
his second , flirting with disaster , features a character who has an armpit fetish . 
one could argue that it's easier to make an audience react to such sexual deviance than explosions , though ; russell disturbs us in three kings by being no-nonsense about the violence . 
when barlow conjures the detonation of his suburban home , russell mutes the sound-we're paying attention to the debris instead of thx bombast . 
three kings is russell's first visually arresting picture . 
stylistically , it stands apart from other war dramas . 
newton thomas sigel's cinematography of the exteriors is overexposed and extremely grainy , which is , of course , entirely appropriate . 
one practically breaks out in sweat staring at the screen . 
 ( a friend enthusiastically added , " it's like having sand in your eyes . " ) 
this also helps to blur the fact that the actual locations are far removed from the persian gulf facade . 
 ( three kings was shot in arizona , california , and mexico . ) 
russell throws plenty at sigel's camera for it to observe-as was the case with russell's previous efforts , the most absurd moments are also the film's most realistic , even the most poignant . 
 ( we watch a bullet puncture an organ from the inside . ) 
if anything , three kings settles down and stops surprising us . 
its climax is pure hollywood , no doubt the answer to why a major studio felt comfortable getting into bed with the indie-minded russell . 
subsequently , the characters become more cartoonish-barlow's post-torture revelry felt phony , and chief , a strong presence in the first third , fails to escape the god-fearing-ultra-serious-anti-racist-black-man-of-power clich ? -so much for cube avoiding token status . 
 ( the arab players , on the other hand , duck stereotype . ) 
clooney , too , transforms into a blandly heroic protestor-marching with the rebels , i waited for him to shout , " let my people go ! " 
hayseed vig notwithstanding , the protagonists are very intelligent , and self-serving , too ; i had a glimmer of hope , based on russell's filmography , that our antiheroes would revert to their greedy selves at some juncture . 
 ( it's not spoiling much to write that . ) 
then again , what historical importance would such nastiness serve ? 
 ( there's already enough cynicism in the film's mentioning of kuwait's oil-infested waters . ) 
russell offers the masses a primer on the oft-dismissed gulf conflict , and pulled off a neat trick : a war tale full of battles that takes place after a truce has been declared . 
if he set out to make something socially/culturally/politically/globally significant , he succeeded . 
with flair .