Tone of the film

Is it just me or was the tone of this film off?

Don't get me wrong. It was a good film. But after watching Generation Kill, a down-to-earth gritty mini-series occurring against a similar backdrop, I felt that the tone of Three Kings was sort of schizophrenic or inconsistent or something. Anyone else get this vibe from it?

It felt infused with some strangely off-beat, dark humour; that quite frankly I didn't "get". It would focus on people's deaths unashamedly; at one point having a slow motion sequence of an officer getting his brains blown out and the soldiers under his command subsequently getting mown down, reminding me more of a video game than a film.

Most of the time it had the atmosphere of your usual run-of-the mill adventure flick; a bunch of unlikely heroes having a laugh on a comical escapade. While also there were times it took itself seriously, attempting to blend in some social commentary among the antics of the protagonists. But there is some gore in it that feels purposeless, from the filmmaker's standpoint. It wasn't there to galvanise anger in the audience, they weren't that satisfying the deaths. Some of these guys I really didn't feel any emotion towards, let alone anger; so their deaths felt pointless. This isn't a slasher film. I just didn't get why exaggerated sounds of flesh bursting from gunshot wounds was necessary. Cars exploding fine, it is an action adventure after all, but the gore felt strangley "off".

My problem with it is just felt a bit messy overall, both in the direction and in conscience. The camera zooms in on gunshot wounds displaying gory innards, focuses on dying soldiers as blood squirts out and they gasp for their last breaths, portrays soldiers running for their lives in a humorous fashion, and shows the civilian/rebels at times, with indifference to their suffering. The protagonists at times felt like they were inappropriately affected by what was going on around them; displaying both altruism, greedy self-centred-ness and plain apathy sporadically.

Now that sounds harsh. The characters' personalities weren't nearly as bad as I described them in the above paragraph. It's just the above description sort of slightly fits how they acted in this film. I didn't feel the flaws in their personalities were that obvious throughout, but rather I could just subtly detect that how the characters, and the camera, treated the situations was slightly "off". "Off" is the only way I can describe it as it wasn't that overt.

The film itself, just like the character's personalities, also felt sort of inconsistent throughout. It felt like it cared about serious commentary one moment; commentary on the motives for the First Gulf War, on the human tragedy that took place after America pulled out, etc. But then the next moment it was a feel good adventure flick. And then the next moment after that it was strangely obsessed with gore. The meaning behind the overly lengthy focus on deaths I was especially confused about. Did they focus on it in such a cold and distant manner to show the ambiguous morality of violence in a warzone; to try and show the deaths as coldly and detached as possible? If that was the reason I felt Generation Kill demonstrated the *beep* a warzone is, alot better. Generation Kill focused on deaths and dying and bodies as well, but it didn't attempt to mix them with a feel good comedy caper, and thus didn't end up feeling messy like this.

Don't get me wrong I loved the end, and also the interrogation scene was very poignant, but the start and middle of the film felt strange. This film wasn't what I expected at all. If it was indeed a black comedy, a sub-genre of which I'm not really too fond admittedly, it still didn't really feel right. Severance was a black comedy I enjoyed while this felt sort of strange.

So, did anyone else notice a sort of subtle inconsistency in the tone of Three Kings?