Well, here are a pair of Arizona types that snuck a peek at David O Russell's film THREE KINGS that MORIARTY reviewed a few weeks back and loved! And these two... Agree. So... Mark the title in your mind... it is in mine, and I am eager to see if it is as good as the evil genius, the nintendo character and Lee Falks hocus pocus man say it is!
The film was in a fairly complete form. The sound mix needed a little more work and a lot of work still needs to be done in the lab, as far as the color of the film. The film does a great job of blending comedy, drama, and suspense. The plot takes place at the end of Desert Storm. While taking in the Iraq soldiers, some members of the U.S. army find a map. They believe that this map will lead them to the Kuwaiti(?) gold. The first twenty minutes are hysterical. They introduce all of the characters with a freeze frame and then a caption, all of which were very funny. Then the film takes a more serious tone as they head out for the gold. It still manages to have many funny parts during this section, though. The characters looking for the gold are played by George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and Spike Jonze(is this the great music video director?). The performances by these four are all great. I was most surprised with Ice Cube. This is definitely the best I have ever seen him. The cinematography was amazing, with a lot of similarities to Saving Private Ryan. The action scenes were all shot hand held, many shots had different speeds(fast and slow motion), and it had a grainy look, similar to SPR. The action is the movie was great as well.
It's a much different take on action scenes than we're used to. It's a much different type of movie than we're used to from the Studio system as well. This has to do with the fact that David O. Russell directed it. He did a fantastic job. He got great performances and told an extremely entertaining story. The film is also very violent and gory, which some audience members seemed not to like. I thought the violence was handled well and shot very real. There are also a few interesting takes on some of the action scenes, with some very slow-mo shots of bullets (not at all like The Matrix or a Ringo Lam style bullet POV) and some great shots, inside the human body, of what a bullet actually does. Most of the audience seemed to really enjoy it, everyone laughed at the right parts. Three Kings just does a great job of blending all of these genres. A lot of movies tend to really mess up when they have a serious moment next to a funny one.
-Yoshi
Here's another view on the film:
I thought that the best part of the film was the way that it mixed the genres as well. It went from a comedy format like I expected from Russell, to a serious more dramatic tale or wrong or right like that of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The big surprise was not that Russell could handle the change in style, but that the transitions between the styles were so well done. This was a unique way of presenting a story that, put in the hands of a more commercial director, would be unwatchable. Another thing that I loved were the performances by the principle actors. George Clooney delivered a strong performance that is comparable to the one that he gave in Out of Sight. Wahlberg's performance is filled with truth and emotion that rivals his remarkable one in Boogie Nights. Surprisingly, Ice Cube goes against his image and does extremely well. Spike Jonze and Jaime Kennedy are both hysterical throughout the film. Everything about this film was great. David O. Russell has done it again.
-Mandrake
