Three Kings a worrying war prophesy

When it was released, Gulf War film 'Three Kings' made little impact. But now it seems prophetic. Director David O. Russell talks about his chillingly prescient film to ANDREW GUMBEL.

In the summer of 1999, the director David O. Russell ran into George Bush - then an aspiring presidential candidate - at a fundraiser. Russell told him that he was making a film that was critical of his father's Gulf War legacy in Iraq. To which Bush shot back: "Then I guess I'm going to have to go finish the job, aren't I?"

Portentous as that reply was, it was not exactly what Russell had in mind. The film, Three Kings, was indeed sharply critical of the way the US military had abandoned Iraq's anti-Saddam rebels to their fate in the spring of 1991. But it was also a scathing and, in the minds of its admirers, refreshingly honest examination of the follies of US military power.

Five years on, it seems extraordinarily timely. While Michael Moore's anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 is generating all the comment - and winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes - it is Russell's film that arguably has the more subtle, more enduring perspective on a post-Cold War world coming dangerously unstuck.

Instead of the usual Hollywood tale of hardened US soldiers overcoming adversity through their wits, firepower, and an unwavering belief in the righteousness of their mission, Three Kings has protagonists who are bored, opportunistic, confused about a war they never got a chance to fight properly, and dangerously impulsive.

Their daring little adventure, locating the gold bullion that Saddam Hussein's men had removed from Kuwait, and stealing it, quickly leads them into more trouble than they could have imagined.

To everyone's surprise, the Iraqis turn out not to be cartoon cut-out enemies, but human beings with complex problems - caused in no small part by US political decisions - to which firepower alone provides no answer. Soon, it becomes difficult to say who the good guys are, or even if it is possible to be a good guy in the moral quagmire of a postwar Iraq.

In 1999, Three Kings came across loud and clear as a Hollywood war movie like no other. Seen through the present-day prism of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, with its attendant chaos, brutality and deep cultural antipathies, it looks something very close to a masterpiece. Not only does it have a visual flair and irreverence reminiscent of the best Vietnam War movies of the 70s, its prescience is extraordinary.

To a startling degree, its themes and preoccupations - everything from the limits of US power to the corrosive moral paradoxes of torture - have become the daily fodder of our newspapers and TV bulletins.

I discussed this with Russell while he was rushing to finish his latest film, I Heart Huckabee's, starring Jude Law and Dustin Hoffman. In person, he displayed the same acerbic intelligence about events in the Middle East as he had on the big screen.

"When I wrote Three Kings," he began, "I couldn't believe that nobody else had done a film about the Gulf War - about the fact that it had been heralded as such a success, and the yellow ribbons around trees and all that, and it was a bunch of horseshit.

"We had basically saved rich Kuwait, period. The great irony to me was that, at the time, we had an international coalition, but Bush the First seemed unwilling to use the momentum at the time to urge that coalition to create a democratic Iraq. Now it's happening without international support, making it so much more difficult."

I put it to Russell that one of the most impressive, and prescient, things about Three Kings is its depiction of the deadly confusions that arise when well-intentioned official US rhetoric is at variance with more insidious realities on the ground. This was his response: "When I was researching Three Kings, I repeatedly met US soldiers who said that they had been torn apart at the end of the war when they were forbidden to assist in the democratic uprising against Saddam. All of the extras were Iraqi refugees who'd come to America after the war. They all had been dumbfounded that the Western powers had not helped them to overthrow Saddam.

"A similarity between the two Gulf Wars is that they both completely ignore the main issue, the pink elephant in the middle of the room, or should I say black elephant - oil. We have participated in supporting corrupt dictatorships for the sake of oil. These dictatorships have spawned poverty, illiteracy, and angry Muslim fundamentalism.

"The dictators have loved this game, because it keeps the heat off them while the mullahs rail against the satanic West. We have participated in this game for no good reason, and now it is biting us on the ass in a karmic pay-off. We could have been off foreign oil over a decade ago, but Republicans keep telling us to just drive bigger cars and not worry. And, by the way, Clinton and Gore didn't do shit to challenge this, either."

Russell's film is eloquent about US inconsistency in the face of Saddam's excesses; happy to blow the morality trumpet to justify liberating Kuwait, but equally happy to abandon anti-Saddam rebels to their fate. I wondered what he made of the pro-war line that to oppose last year's invasion was to condone Saddam's brutality.

"It's a twisted game Bush plays, because, of course, Saddam is a dick and the world is better off without him. But weren't the hijackers from Saudi Arabia? And isn't bin Laden from Saudi Arabia? And isn't there evidence of Saudi support for al Qaeda? And doesn't the Bush family have a long incestuous oil relationship with the Saudis?

"There's a possibility that, in the long-term, the takeover of Iraq as a democratic starting point in the region could work out. But it doesn't seem the right place to start. I think our energy policy is the place to start, and then Saudi Arabia."

The wonder of Three Kings is that it was not some art-house labour of love, but a big-budget, big-studio action adventure with an all-star cast led by George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube.

From the start we know we have stepped a long way from the usual Hollywood cliches. In the opening sequence, a surrendering Iraqi conscript is shot in the neck for no reason. The US reservist who shoots him is guided not by policy, but by his anxiety to see some action before he leaves the desert.

It gets even darker. The uniformed men openly mock a TV reporter as she talks on air about America restoring the honour it lost in Vietnam. A Special Forces captain (George Clooney) takes a rival reporter into a satellite shed and humps her with abandon. A Christian black reservist (Ice Cube) takes exception to the terms "dune coon" and "sand nigger" for the enemy; "towel head" and "camel jockey" are suggested as perfectly good substitutes.

Twenty minutes in, you wonder how Russell ever got away with making this movie. But then the psychological complexity of his characters kicks in, along with the rollicking plot, and you realise how deftly he manages to adhere - just - to Hollywood conventions of story structure and narrative development, even as he throws everything else on its head.

The encounters between Americans and Iraqis are anything but obvious. The Shia Muslims, with their beards and veiled women, turn out to be highly conversant with late-model American convertibles. Saddam's men are not evil as such, just trying to survive, like everyone else. Wahlberg's character, the reservist who fires the opening shot, ends up empathising to a surprising degree with the Iraqis, but, paradoxically, learns his most powerful lessons from a torturer who pours crude oil down his throat to ram home the true nature of US interests.

I asked Russell about this scene in the light of revelations about US mistreatment of prisoners.

"What motivated me to do that scene was the irony that our intelligence specialists had trained the Iraqis in torture techniques when they were fighting Iran. We've done this all over the world. I can't say I'm surprised that our military has done this, given that it has been a part of our military or intelligence culture for too long, as disgraceful as this is."

Perhaps the Bush administration and the US public should have paid closer attention to this film and its lessons before throwing themselves behind last year's invasion. After watching Three Kings, the ostensible global struggle between good and evil can never look the same again.

ON SCREEN

* What: Three Kings (1999)

* Who: Starring George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, Cliff Curtis

* Where: Now available on video and DVD

- INDEPENDENT