Three Kings

What can I say? The previews were interesting and buzz was good about this one, so I shelled out full price and took a chance. The movie was so oddly filmed, yet well acted and written, that I can't figure out whether I liked it or really liked it.
Basic plot line of this movie: renegade soldiers discover gold is hidden just over the border and decide to go claim it for themselves (anyone ever see Kelly's Heroes with Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland?). When they get to the village, they witness atrocities committed by the occupation army of Iraq and can't turn their backs. What starts out as a get-rich-quick scheme ends up being a pilgrimage of refugees led by the GI's who have taken it upon themselves to protect the people until they cross the border out of Iraq.
There were some parts of this that I found hard to swallow, like guys who have known each other for five minutes completely trusting each other to divvy up the gold equally and not turn anyone in. Aside from that, the plot wasn't too hard to take. An interesting look at the whole war is taken in this film in that it calls into view the personal accounts of an Iraqi soldier reflecting on the death of his son and the crippling of his wife. Any human feeling you have for him is lost in his treatment of the other Iraqi citizens, but you get the All's Quiet On The Western Front flashbacks from the opposing viewpoint. As the film ended, I started thinking of all the hardships the people of that country go through because of a leader we incited them to overthrow. They don't have the weapons or organization, so they get slaughtered by their own country's troops and Saddam sits in power. We really shoulda kept going right to Baghdad.
A lot of interesting directoral choices keep the look of this movie unique, and the characters are all shown to have good and bad points. Overall, well worth seeing although I'm not completely sure whether it's worth full price or not.

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