David O. Russell directs George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube in this action comedy ‘with a heart’ set around the end of the first Iraq war.

It is the one where Marky Mark gets tortured. The one where George Clooney and his director got into a fistfight on set. The one where Spike Jonze puts in a pretty serviceable full time comedy relief. The one that feels like a proper himbo blockbuster in the mould of Kelly’s Heroes… But satirises and goes on the offensive over American military action in the Middle East. The one that is shot on Ektachrome transparency stock that was cross-processed in colour negative chemicals, to create a scorched, toxic look. The one that is silly, then brutal, then rousing. A Hollywood studio is unlikely to invest a blockbuster budget into anything like this abrasive yet entertaining scrapper ever again. Three Kings is one of the unsung greats of its strange little era of premium entertainments.

9

Perfect Double Bill: The Hurt Locker (2008)