A kind of update of Kelly's Heroes, in deportment as well as in period: an insanity-of-war movie, set impudently at the end of Desert Storm, centered around four American soldiers (George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and, immediately recognizable as expendable, Spike Jonze) who have extracted from a captive Iraqi's rectum a treasure map to millions upon millions in stolen Kuwaiti gold, who then set out in secret to retrieve the loot for themselves (how, again, were they planning to take this home?), and who end up old-fashionedly fighting for the cause of Iraqi dissidents left dangling in the wind by the cease-fire. Needless to say, this is not the picture of Desert Storm that George Bush (whose name is frequently uttered as a synonym for skunk) or Charlton Heston, for that matter, would have wanted to see painted. For others, less entrenched in their positions, there is healthful attention paid to American fatheadedness and to the contrasting points of view of the natives -- even and especially the well-acted Iraqi torturer who bears a legitimate personal grudge. And those fabled underground bunkers, about which we heard so much at the time, are here explored far enough to satisfy the wildest imagination. Some of the aforesaid healthful attention, however, seems no more than lip service. In matters of style and attitude the movie is unrepentently in the camp of the Orthodox American Fathead. (OAF, for short.) Not the branch of it presided over by the Bushes and Hestons, but the one figureheaded by MTV and Tarantino, among others: new and now are always good; edgy is good; quirky is good; flip and facetious are good; cynical and callous are good; shock is good; gore (not Gore) is good; cutting-edge technology is good; tricks and gimmicks are good. David O. Russell, the writer and director, has beaten a fast path to the Hollywood Establishment from the independent Spanking the Monkey through the marginal Flirting with Disaster, but it still seems important to him to be seen as Out There. (Farthest out: following the flight of a bullet all the way through the internal organs. More ho-hum: the bleached and blotted color.) His visuals are sufficiently showoffy to defeat disinterest if not distaste. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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