Three Kings

Four American soldiers combine to liberate a missing shipment of gold in the chaos of Iraq after the first Gulf War.

This is a bold, even brazen attempt to get to grips with the complexities and hypocrisies of the US intervention in Iraq in the early 90s. David O Russell’s stinging film marries anarchic black comedy, action adventure tropes, and cutting edge technique. Plus a big dose of star power.

Do the mercenary motivations of George Clooney and his Desert Stormers function as a metaphor for wider political imperatives? How could they not? Certainly there is nothing reassuring about the Americans’ racist attitudes to the Iraqis. This was the most vivid portrait of the new theatre of war Hollywood had produced to that point: impersonal, high-tech, highly mediated and little understood. It’s a high point in Russell’s erratic but always ambitious career, which went on to include Silver Linings Playbook, The Fighter and American Hustle.

The screening on Sunday Aug 23 will conclude with a free screening of Werner Herzog’s 54-minute documentary Lessons of Darkness (1992)

Some kind weird masterpiece, a screw-loose war picture that sends action and humor crashing head-on into each other and spinning off into political anger

Roger Ebert

It remains the most caustic anti-war movie of this generation.

David Edelstein, The New York Times

Russell not only has designed an action-adventure laced with incendiary humor but a movie that wants to explore race, politics, war, the media and U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. In large measure, he pulls it off with breathtaking aplomb.

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

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