25 years later: ‘Three Kings’ is still overrated

‘Being John Malkovich,’ though, remains great as ever.

Three Kings is a movie that I didn’t particularly appreciate when I first saw it back in 1999. In that “Best Movie Year Ever,” some critics called it the best movie of the year, but I never really understood the effusive praise. 

Then, I revisited the film, around the time of the Iraq War, when its themes became newly relevant, and I wouldn’t say I liked it that much then, either. Beyond all that, it was directed by David O. Russell, a filmmaker whose work I’ve grown to dislike intensely over the years- even before one considers that he’s not known to be the greatest guy. 

For its 25th annivesrary, which it marked earlier this month, I thought I’d give Three Kings one more shot. After all, our reactions to films tend to represent snapshots of the people we are at the moment we see them- and sometimes even the mood we were in the day we saw them. 

Having now watched it again, I regret to inform you that I was right the first two times. With Three Kings, there’s just no there, there. 

Released in the fall of 1999, Three Kings is one of the only movies of note set during the first Gulf War, from 1991 (others include Courage Under Fire, Jarhead, and the CNN movie Live From Baghdad, while the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate touched on the war as well. The South Park movie, also from ’99, made a gay cartoon version of Saddam Hussein the villain, but that’s a stretch.) 

Three Kings is actually set immediately after the end of the war, in which Iraq has been driven out of Kuwait, there’s a ceasefire, and while the U.S.-led coalition has opted not to remove Saddam Hussein from power, President George H.W. Bush has told anti-Saddam rebels to “rise up” against the dictator, without providing any real support for such an uprising.