Ultimately, and at its core, THREE KINGS is just more revisionist nonsense. Clearly, writer and director David O. Russell has an axe to grind. He’s pissed off at the world and the establishment, and wants us all to bear witness. Why? Who knows, who cares! But had I known this beforehand, that I’d be forced to endure some moron’s inflated sense of events, I wouldn’t have wasted my time. My question is why put message before quality? If you have the quality already, the message will fall into place behind it, not vice versa. And truth is, I hate involving politics here. I try more than you’ll know to avoid it, because my own political opinion isn’t necessary, and not why you’re here. However, when a movie tries to convince and dupe us into believing something that isn’t true, I take issue with it. But let me clarify this because THREE KINGS doesn’t lie about everything. What it does is cleverly, or deceptively, either bend the truth just enough, or ignore evidence to support its revisionist conclusions. You know the old saying that a lie is most convincingly hidden between two truths? Here it’s clearer than ever.

      But if this doesn’t bother you, there’s the fact that it’s just not a great movie. More than anything, it’s slow and rather uneventful. So on both fronts you’ve got reasons not to bother. George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg seem to be giving their all though, despite little to work with. They deserve better, and so do we.