At the movies

'Three kings'

It is symptomatic of the sickness of today's studio system that Three Kingshad a rough road through the Warner Bros. hierarchy.

Certain executives apparently were more willing to spend upwards of $150 million on the creatively impaired Wild Wild West than $40 million (final budget $50 million) on David Russell's unique concept of a modern war movie. Fortunately for Russell and the moviegoing public, more farseeing minds prevailed, and Three Kings was made.

The result is an engrossing adventure brimming with wit, yet with enough pathos and political comment to raise it far above the macho films aimed at the puberty market. Three Kings has been compared to every movie from M-A-S-H to Schindler's List. What it most resembles is George Stevens' 1939 Gunga Din, in which three adventurers also combined wit and battle.

Actually there are four kings, each a unique personality:

Capt. Archie Gates (George Clooney) knows how to make end runs around the Army brass as a career soldier.

Green Beret Sgt. Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg) is a reservist, a patriotic soldier who pines for his wife and new daughter in Detroit.

Staff Sgt. Chief Elgin (Ice Cube) has been called up from his dreary job as an airport baggage handler; he has been bruised by his life at home and in the Army and finds solace in his Christian beliefs.

Pvt. Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze), an unwitting clown who repeatedly exposes his lack of education.

The Persian Gulf War has ended with none of the quartet having seen action. Bored and restless, Gates concocts a crazy scheme: stealing the stash of gold Saddam Hussein reportedly stole from the Kuwaitis.

A map is discovered in a curious part of an Iraqi prisoner's anatomy. Gates commandeers it, and he believes it leads the way to a bunker containing the bullion (Vig wonders if that's the stuff that comes in tiny cubes that you make soup with).

The four set out on their adventure, regardless of the AWOL risk. Although there is an air of bravado, the action is not all fun and games. Russell also portrays the viciousness of a wartime atmosphere, on both sides. Blood is spilt, atrocities are committed, sorrow is felt.

Russell has created a marvel of invention to hold the audience's rapt attention. He employs techniques of the Nouvelle Vague: slow motion, quick cuts, still photos. He also varies the film's print quality - at times giving the effect of a documentary; at other times, a glossy Hollywood film.

No American director since Orson Welles has used the screen so innovatively.