We Three Kings Be Stealing the Gold, intoned Spike Jones toward the beginning of today's film,

as the character hilariously miscounts the number of US Army soldiers involved in a scheme to steal

booty from Saddam Hussein at the end of Operation Desert Storm.

The star-studded cast includes George Clooney, Ice Cube, Markie Mark, Cliff Curtis, and

Nora Dunn.

After finding a map they believe depicts the location of millions of dollars in Kuwaiti Bullion,

one special forces officer and three dingling soldiers

steal a Humvee and head into the desert

to pull off what they believe will be the perfect crime.

It's a heist film within a war film.

And in the end, an attempt at a morality play

about American interventionism and greed.

The final scenes, after lots of combat hijinks and a particularly harrowing torture sequence, show the reformed and repentant main characters sacrificing their horde of gold bricks to arrange for the safe border crossing of Shiite dissidents into Iran.

The film has an edgy look, having been shot on reversal film and cross-processed to produce harsh contrast and vivid colors.

It led a wave of big budget studio films

to adopt more experimental production techniques,

and it put Director David O Russell on the map.

But is today's movie a clean kill or a pocketful bile?

Find out as Friendly Fire takes on the 1999 film Three Kings. Yeah, what is it good for?

I absolutely nothing.

Uh-huh.

The War Movie Podcast,

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