Edelstein on ‘Three Kings’
From today’s New York Times comes an interesting review of the 1999 movie on the aftermath of Gulf War I: One Film, Two Wars, ‘Three Kings’. Reviewer David Edelstein is a big fan of the movie, which he describes as “the most caustic anti-war movie of this generation.” He also quotes from a recent email he received from David O. Russel, the movie’s writer and director, on how he’d like to believe that the American public is smarter today about the realities underlying our mideast war aims, “but I honestly don’t think so… I mean, come on, it’s a SCANDAL that Bush has pulled this off. It’s mind-blowing.”
Anyway, if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you should rent it. Good performances by George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, among others.
I’m not sure why, but I’ve found myself drawn to war movies lately. On some level I guess it’s obvious: a steady diet of raw news from the front lines has left me wanting something a little more polished, something that puts all the technology and amoral strategic calculation into a more-human context.
I recently Tivo’d and re-watched Full Metal Jacket, mostly for Lee Ermey’s Sergeant Hartman in the first half of the film, but as usual for a Kubrick movie, once I started watching it I was sucked in, hypnotized by his vision, and ended up watching the whole thing.
I also rented Saving Private Ryan last week, which really is an incredibly good war movie, as long as you skip the ham-handed opening and closing present-day sequences where Spielberg felt compelled to hammer us over the head with his message, just in case there were any five-year-olds in the audience who’d missed it.
Two war movies I’ve meant to see, but haven’t gotten around to, are The Thin Red Line (with a pre-Two Towers performance by Miranda Otto!), and Tears of the Sun, which has that Bruce Willis thing going for it (assuming we’re talking about the Bruce Willis who was smart enough to associate himself with The Fifth Element and Twelve Monkeys), which I’m hoping is enough to make up for the frighteningly twisted Hollywood premise of a war movie predicated on a Navy Seal officer’s heroic decision to violate his orders in order to save a bunch of Third World civilians.
Anyway, get out there and get your war (movies) on.
April 6th, 2003 at 11:17 am
It’s not really of the same variety of war movie, but the Japanese animated film “Grave of the Fireflies” is as good a reminder of what war means, even when justified, as anything I’ve ever seen. It follows the lives of a boy and his little sister around the time of the firebombing of Tokyo near the end of WWII. No attempt is made to demonize the Americans for the bombing; it’s just about the impact the war had on lives. This is what it looked like on the other side when we were trying to get the Nips.
I thought “Three Kings” was great by the way. It’s kinda surprising it got any large release in the first place — it certainly wouldn’t now.
April 6th, 2003 at 4:46 pm
One “war” movie I have been watching lately (I have to watch it in segments when the kids are otherwise occupied) is “Starship Troopers”. It is, in my opinion, a scathingly ANTI-war movie, although it was not advertised as such. I’d like to read the original story it was based on…
And of course, “Dr. Strangelove”. Anyway, both movies are surreal takes on the madness of warfare, and deserve a look. I have yet to see “Three Kings”, but I will look for it soon.
April 6th, 2003 at 6:06 pm
The book Starship Troopers is based on is nothing at all like the movie except in superficial ways. That said, I really like both for completely different reasons. I agree that the movie in all its campy glory is actually is a pretty damn good anti-war piece and I’m glad that somebody else has the same appreciation for it that I do. Dammit.
April 7th, 2003 at 11:47 am
Two other War flicks I would recommend are The Big Red One, which chronicles the 1st Infantry Division during WWII and Patton which is a biography about one of the greatest military minds of all time.