Cruz’s sudden bursting into tears at the sight of pathetically oiled birds or the shots of Barlow being force-fed oil with his mouth jammed open with a CD case both make a fairly crude political point about the underlying economics of the conflict, but there are also some more effective images: a coffin full of passports, suggesting where they have come from; the glimpse of Rodney King on a TV being beaten in LA (possibly as a time reference for the viewer or as inspiration for the torturers); the sudden stumbling on a family, huddled together underground, waiting to be tortured; and the bizarre reality of global communications by which Barlow is able to get a call through from one of a box of discarded phones direct to his wife back home. Turning a corner in the Citadel, Gates crashes into a man running the other way, who offers no threat but drops his pile of jeans. Western imperialism collides with Eastern consumerism.
Moral absolutes are questioned as the chief torturer, Captain Said (Saïd Taghmaoui), talks of the death of his baby in an air strike (the shot of falling masonry onto a cot repeated in slow motion), but there is also a suffocating literalism here too. As soon as a character talks of something, we see a shot of it. Barlow mentions his wife, so we have a shot of her at home; he thinks of his greatest fear and we see a wall exploding back home. As the motivation and actions of the enemy are humanized, the only clear villain remains the ubiquitous Saddam, much talked about, much feared, and seen in iconic pictures but not represented on-screen. Possibly after Hot Shots II (Jim Abrahams, 1993), he would seem a purely comic figure.
A times, there seems a dissonance between nostalgia for a particular generic form and the more gritty content. The soundtrack seems to hanker after a purer heist narrative like the original The Italian Job (Peter Collinson, 1969) with freestyle jazz drumming accompanying some of the loading of the gold and Barlow’s search for a truck.2 The ubiquitous Western music reflects a sense of cultural imperialism, and its use in scenes like the entrance to the refugee camp gives the characters the appearance of figures in a pop video or models on a catwalk, walking in time to the beat. Elgin’s more openness to Eastern influences, reflected in his willingness to kneel and pray alongside Muslims, is reflected in his taste in music in the car, much to Vig’s disgust but to the contentment of his two smiling passengers. Russell uses the Carpenters’ easy-listening classic “If You Leave Me Now” from the in-car stereo as the luxury vehicles approach, but it also bleeds over the subsequent exchange of gunfire. Vig manages to lock himself out of one car, which also contains his gun. Luckily, a stray bullet shatters the glass and he can reach in to retrieve it, at which point the volume of the Carpenters’ song rises on the soundtrack.
Some effects suggest elements of an action movie, like the scene in which Elgin throws an explosive football at a helicopter, the brief exchange of fire earlier where the path of the American bullets are slowed down so that we hear them thud into their targets, the flight from the compound and the attack from bazookas firing gas, or the truck crashing into a minefield, but such scenes seem contrived for the pleasures of spectacle. Clearly, any director would want to get the most from his stunts, but Russell’s use of slow motion becomes almost predictable in depicting any act of violence.
Gates eventually locates Troy and shoots two soldiers who raise their weapons and wounds the chief torturer, who is unarmed. The force he uses here is proportionate to the threat. However, the handing of his pistol to Troy means that he is explicitly condoning killing former captors. Barlow’s choice to shoot wide saves both men from the moral ambiguity of when revenge tips over into cold-blooded murder. Gates goes back to rescue his fellow soldier at considerable risk to himself with no prospect of material gain. It is unclear if he always intended to search for Troy, feels a sense of residual guilt (in involving soldiers, who have little training and no combat experience), or responds to the pleading of Vig, but Gates performs the role of military hero, even if this is contrary to his training. There may be an element of some hubris here too. He may be highly trained, but attacking a compound containing an unknown number of soldiers with only a handful of men seems a little foolhardy.
As a microcosm for the war as a whole, the heist conveys a powerful sense of an apparently easy mission with clear aims, which is then rapidly compromised into a dangerous mess by the complexity of local and regional politics. When Gates and Troy emerge into daylight, there is a pan around the scene outside the compound for several seconds without music, as we also survey a scene of destruction, framed with a fluttering Iraqi flag. Unlike the first sight of him with a junior reporter, Gates remains a professional soldier once in the field. The shot rotating around Gates as he looks out into the scrubland underlines that he remains alert and aware there is still danger, and he reacts quickly to Vig being shot, riddling his attacker on the ground with bullets. The speed and effectiveness with which he puts his head to Troy’s chest, diagnoses a hole in his lungs, and improvises a device to relieve pressure on internal organs is like a positive version of the sepsis sequence (as well as injecting a new narrative impetus into the narrative with the need to relieve the pressure in the valve every 15 minutes).
The reality of bullet wounds is conveyed by the speed with which Vig loses consciousness and the reduced sound that accompanies shots of Troy looking up at Elgin and Gates as they try and treat them. Alternate point-of-view shots from Vig and Troy’s perspective as they are lying on the ground, side by side, effectively conveys their helplessness (a device also subsequently used in David Fincher’s Zodiac [2007], showing the point of view of victims of a serial killer at Berryessa).3 Gates recognizes death and breaks the news to Troy with a simple “He’s gone,” and subsequently, as Troy cries over Vig’s body, Gates silently crosses himself and the scene ends with a fade to black.
By this stage, the pursuit of the gold has been largely forgotten and eclipsed by the suffering of the Iraqi people, symbolized by a small group of dissidents, Troy’s torture, and Vig’s senseless death. There are small glimpses of the heist genre but it has been transformed into something more akin to a parable. There is the familiar element of the division of the spoils, but here it is an almost biblical scene of the group of Iraqis lining up to receive a bar of gold each as payment for their help. The manner in which Troy introduces the Iraqi refugees to his fellow officers marks the breakdown of barriers that the main characters feel with those they have saved and who in turn saved them. When the medical assistance arrives, Cruz, who has eventually found her story, asks if he has the gold, to which Gates replies evasively, “We helped a lot of people.”
Three Kings is not a film without weaknesses. The resistance shelter (with a tepee-like entrance clearly above ground) suddenly appearing right next to the site of the accident of the three protagonists’ vehicles is patently ridiculous and feels more like the revelation of Q’s latest laboratory in a Bond film. However, although it certainly simplifies the complex political and religious situation in Iraq, it also creates dramatically engaging situations. At the Iran border, the dilemma of the Iraqi rebels is made concrete: if they are not allowed to cross, Saddam’s forces will slaughter them. The discussion between the American senior officers and the Iraqi leaders is shown in only long-shot, without dialogue, almost like a dumb show.
With the consent of his men, Gates offers to reveal the whereabouts of the gold, if the rebels are guaranteed safe passage across the border. When it comes to a confrontation, Gates puts the welfare of people before material gain (although it could be said that even a single bar of gold would be worth a great deal). Like the scene where he gains the luxury cars, Gates uses his charm to persuade Horn to support the rebels in crossing the border, lacing heroism with self-interest: “Save some people, get that star.” In standing by his word, in going back for his men, in showing bravery (not all of which with material reward to be gained), Gates comes to represent what he describes to Horn as “Soldiers’ honor.”
By the close, we see Elgin and Gates working, ironically, in Hollywood as military consultan
ts and demonstrating fighting techniques on set. Barlow is running his own carpet company with his wife, now with two children. With U2’s “In God’s Country” coming up on the soundtrack, the ending is decidedly upbeat as if the men have been rewarded for their bravery, selflessness, and possibly entrepreneurial appropriation of some of the Kuwaiti gold.
Hill wonders if the subject matter would have also appealed to Tarantino (who indeed went on to make his own war story, Inglorious Basterds [2009]), or “it’s something that perhaps a director like David Fincher would have darkly fashioned.”4 The crafting of the bullet sequences through Troy’s body may have appealed to the latter but perhaps he would not have adopted Russell’s apparent chaotic style of improvised direction. Hill terms it “a morally coherent, visually daring and truly subversive anti-war film,”5 and it certainly stands as a memorable expression of the delicate balance of tragedy and absurdity that characterizes the lived experience of many veterans.
Along with The Peacemaker, The Good German, and The Men Who Stare at Goats, this is one of several appearances by Clooney in uniform—in all three playing a senior intelligence officer, rather than a front-line soldier. As in Syriana (also set in the Middle East), his character understands the political complexities of a situation and goes some way to explain them to his fellow characters (and by extension, the viewers). Despite personal and professional differences with Russell, Clooney shares a strong commitment to try and shed light on contemporary conflicts and, by raising awareness, help to end them. His own particular passion is the ongoing fighting and atrocities that have been committed in Darfur, and he continues to lend his voice to those opposing the situation in that troubled region.
Ocean’s Eleven (Steven Soderbergh, 2001)
Beyond the title, Ted Griffin’s screenplay includes few links with Lewis Milestone’s 1960 film. There is a plan to steal from several casinos on one night (the Bellagio, the Mirage, and the MGM Grand), led by a charismatic leader, Danny Ocean (George Clooney), with an able sidekick, Rusty (Brad Pitt), and a black member of the gang, Basher Tarr (Don Cheadle). But Soderbergh, forced to ditch original plans to shoot in black-and-white, also cut an original first shot of Rusty framed with a large mural of Sinatra, suggesting he was not keen to underline parallels with the earlier film.
A key difference from the original film is the nature of the cast. In 1960, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. represented the epitome of uncontrived cool, the center of the so-called Rat Pack. The cast of the films in this chapter operates in a completely different world. Forty years later, in place of excessive smoking, drinking, and partying we have hard bodies and celebrities sworn to fairly strict exercise regimes. Rather than singers who acted for a little distraction, we have film actors who definitely have no pretensions as singers (except Catherine Zeta-Jones for a brief spell in the 1990s). The three films use musical accompaniments to suggest the Sinatra era (the snatch of Elvis’s “A Little Less Conversation” was enough to reanimate global interest in the singer’s back catalog) but none of it is produced by the cast themselves. For them, Vegas is purely a place of financial opportunity, not a performance venue. Rather than figures, particularly Sinatra, who operated on the fringes of criminality, we have actors who use their profiles for political activism, such as Clooney’s work on behalf of Darfur or Pitt’s involvement with post-Katrina reconstruction.
All three films work on the basis of presenting a series of difficulties, and then among potential solutions, fresh problems are thrown into the mix. In the first film, it is Danny’s attachment to his ex-wife Tess (Julia Roberts), the current girlfriend of Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), which is revealed as the driving force for the job. In Ocean’s Twelve, Rusty’s relationship to Isabel (Catherine Zeta-Jones), a cop, fulfills a similar function.
In hindsight, the success of the franchise seems a foregone conclusion but the first film had to establish the tone of interrelationships. The first shot of Ocean’s Eleven shows Danny blaming his criminal behavior on being “upset” at his wife leaving him, setting him on a “self-destructive pattern.” On being asked if he could break away from this, he logically points out that his wife cannot leave him twice. The film establishes then that it is his story, the tale of a man with a troubled personal life but who can charm what has to be said seems a fairly pliant parole board.
Repeated shots of Danny show him fiddling with his ring (underlying his motivation to win back his wife), and we have a transformation of his rough-shaven appearance to the rising shot of him as a smooth operator, now clean-shaven, appearing on an escalator at an Atlantic City casino. He seems a compulsive risk taker and charmingly plausible liar, telling his parole officer on the phone that he has not been in trouble or drinking, although we have just seen him doing the latter. He is mostly dressed in dark, sober colors, often black, such as when he explains to Rusty the basic plan, and even when he is in a shop with Saul (Carl Reiner) is dressed in a stylish mustard-colored shirt. Strong underlighting at gambling tables, designed to make clients as attractive as possible, certainly plays up Clooney’s facial features (also used later at the restaurant where he reveals himself to Tess).
The Ocean’s franchise is a narrative featuring, and designed for, those beyond the 16–24 demographic, and we see the frustration of Rusty (Brad Pitt) having to babysit spoiled pop stars, who cannot even follow the rules of poker. Although Rusty and Danny argue over criminal strategy here, Danny wins the argument, having substance behind his bluff (symbolically winning the hand), and can see how bored Rusty is in his present position. From the outset, there is an easy, relaxed tone to the banter between Pitt and Clooney based on their well-established personal friendship. They can credibly indulge in the kind of comic self-aware, self-canceling dialogue that is a feature of Friends, in which they both had cameo roles, and like in the TV series, as soon as the dialogue heads too far toward sentiment or cliché, there is a countermovement into self-deprecating humor. When Danny delivers his pitch for the plan as they wait for an elevator, Rusty reacts with “Been practicing that speech, haven’t you?” to which Danny admits “A little bit. Did I rush it?” A similar style appears in Intolerable Cruelty, when Miles interrupts his own grandiose practice speech to a jury, implying a relationship between Donaly and the pool boy with “Did I go too far?”
Soderbergh uses a number of self-conscious camera placements or movements that draw attention to themselves, like the high-angle fixed cameras for shots of cars, such as in Rusty’s open-top sports car near the beginning, the rotating shot that follows Rusty eating as the others watch a surveillance monitor, or the cropped shot of Clooney’s face as he first surprises Tess in the restaurant (like Foley’s appearance at Sisco’s table in Out of Sight). The staccato effect used in the sequence where Danny watches Linus (Matt Damon) steal a wallet on a Chicago train has the effect of marking it as a digression from the main plot as well as allowing a momentary freeze-frame at the point of the crime and as Danny plants the invitation on him. Soderbergh also uses freeze-frames in the sequel such as the key moment when Rusty jumps out of the bathroom window on hearing that Isabel is about to make a breakthrough in the case.
The elaborate plots of the sequels are sometimes criticized, but the unreality of the whole enterprise is established in the first film with the theft of a device (handily mobile on its own trolley) that can emit an electromagnetic pulse similar to a nuclear bomb. The huge mock-up of the vault at the Bellagio seems unlikely, but as a metaphor for venture capitalism, the whole Ocean’s series pushes notions of planning to an extreme. Here you really do have to spend money to make money. There is a dissolve from the fake to the real thing, but unlike Kubrick’s maze in The Shining (1980), Soderbergh does not attempt an exact match. There are small attempts to capture the excesses of Vegas. Soderbergh frames Tarr watching TV coverage of the demolition of a hotel (reasonably modern but now seen as passé) as we see through the window behind him the real one fall.
It is perhaps inevitable that
in a film, whose very title suggests a large main cast, Clooney should lose some of the main narrative focus at times. His foolish appearance on surveillance video (in meeting Tess) undermines his role as leader, from which he, albeit temporarily, has to step back. However, he remains cool throughout. The geekiness is outsourced to the ensemble characters, so Livingstone (Eddie Jemison) has the nerves, the Malloy brothers (Casey Affleck as Virgil and Scott Caan as Turk) squabble to the point that Linus begs not be left alone in the van with them, Tarr has an avalanche of British slang, and Reuben (Elliott Gould) personifies sartorial bad taste (complaining about Benedict’s casino as a “gaudy monstrosity” while sporting paisley shorts, huge gold jewelry, cigars, and glasses). It almost leaves Danny and Rusty with too little to distinguish them (we never really see Rusty’s supposed card skills in action).
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