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Operation Desert Storm was the closest an American military campaign has come to a Hollywood blockbuster. Preceded by weeks of media buildup, it opened with a bang and ended in a quick, easy triumph. Then it was promptly forgotten. Never even came out on video. Now David O. Russell, a director noted for two flaky comedies (Spanking the Monkey, Flirting with Disaster) has made what one might call an unofficial Gulf War film. Colin Powell won't like it.
Fast, furious and smart-alecky, Three Kings distills the surreal dreaminess of Apocalypse Now, the black comedy of M*A*S*H, the disorienting visual dazzle of Natural Born Killers and the virtuoso violence of Saving Private Ryan into something excitingly new. Even Spielberg didn't show a bullet wound inside a body.
The movie begins, deceptively, as a cynical lark. With the cease-fire just signed between the U.S. and Iraq, four soldiers (Clooney, Wahlberg, Ice Cube and Spike Jonze) set out with a map (retrieved from a POW's private O parts) to loot Saddam Hussein's bunker. They find it, all right, and emerge into the baking sun with Louis Vuitton bags stuffed with gold ingots. But after they run into crossfire between Saddam's forces and local rebels, these soldiers of fortune have to make a moral choice: Should they run for it or throw their muscle behind the rebels who, at the U.S. government's urging, are struggling to topple Saddam? A landscape that had seemed to them laughably chaotic—at one point they're showered with exploding cow—becomes sheer hell, pitted with land mines and fogged by chemical weapons. Their rescue—of the rebels and themselves—is a bracing and, in the end, noble adventure. (R)
Bottom Line: Kicks up a (Desert) Storm
Jeremy Northam, Steve Zahn
Down in Texas, two escaped cons (Northam and Zahn) steal an RV and assume the identities of its owners, a gay couple who stage beauty pageants for girls. Arriving in Happy, the pair take the helm of the Little Miss Fresh Squeezed Pageant. Zahn, who looks as if his favorite childhood book was In Cold Blood, invents dance steps that might have defeated Nureyev. Meanwhile, Northam plans to rob the bank.
The movie takes only the most affectionate pokes at the cornball locals (farmer Paul Dooley, auctioning off a vase, pronounces it a "Ming—Wy-o-ming!"). And the erotic crosscurrents play out lightly. Northam is attracted to the lady banker, Zahn to the girls' teacher (Illeana Douglas), and the town's sheriff, played by William H. Macy, to Northam. You can see the yearning swimming like goldfish in Macy's saucer eyes. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Nice place to visit
Ashley Judd, Tommy Lee Jones
One of the endless glories of our Constitution is its openness to interpretation. Judd, playing a pretty housewife framed for the at-sea murder of her wealthy but shady husband, is sent to the slammer for six years. When she realizes the husband probably faked his death and is siphoning off the insurance money (and living with her young son and ex-best friend), she decides to take advantage of the Fifth Amendment, under which no person "shall be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." She will find him, kill him and walk away scot-free, and not even the Supreme Court dressed up in SWAT gear can stop her.
Once Judd, her sentence served, starts off in pursuit of the big creep, it becomes apparent that this is a female Fugitive. She runs across rooftops, plows through traffic and topples off a ferryboat in order to stay a pace ahead of her parole officer (Tommy Lee Jones, who played a similar role in The Fugitive but here smiles sheepishly, as if he had wandered into a romantic comedy). Unfortunately, Judd, always a skillful actress, doesn't have the physicality or the heft to make these action scenes exciting. (R)
Bottom Line: On the lam and lame-o
Jonny Lee Miller, Robert Carlyle
Like last year's Elizabeth, this is a British costume piece grabbed by its silk-stockinged ankles, swung like a cat and pitched headlong in the direction of late-20th-century sensibilities. It's amplified like a rock concert and directed with the steady, throbbing pulse of a techno-music video. Elizabeth, though, had the benefit of great history and a matching performance by Cate Blanchett. Plunkett & Macleane, loosely fact-based, is simply one of those tales of bawdy 18th-century highwaymen carousing over hill and dale. Done two centuries from now, with holograms and Martians in supporting roles, it still will be of limited interest.
Carlyle and Miller are, respectively, Plunkett and Macleane. Their adventures, other than robbing, include drinking, brawling and (in Macleane's case) dallying with the ladies. One of these is Liv Tyler, as the ward of Britain's Lord Chief Justice. Child of Aerosmith she may be, but Tyler, her porcelain skin set off by flowing black hair and a dress of blue silk, is the only one here who registers as a blast from the past. (R)
Bottom Line: Fit for hanging
Russell Crowe, Lolita Davidovich
In Mystery, Alaska, a small town hidden by mountains and snow, hockey rules. It's almost a slur on one's manhood not to be picked to lace up skates and grab a stick for the area team. Then a journalist and former local boy (Hank Azaria) profiles the town in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED. A challenge match against no less than the New York Rangers follows. As TV crews fly in, the Mystery men face the uneasy prospect of being blown away by the visiting pros.
The big match plays out without too much hokey last-minute melodrama, and both Crowe (as a sheriff getting too old to skate swiftly) and Davidovich (the mayor's philandering wife) contribute restrained yet solid performances. But I couldn't shake my distaste for the town itself. What sort of community allows its leading citizens to determine who'll join a team or allows a man on trial to get off so he can return to the game? If these folks thought tossing a virgin into a volcano would be good for the players, they'd dash off to find an active crater. (R)
Bottom Line: Yukon skip it
Leah Rozen is on vacation.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
