It’s March 1991 and the Gulf War has just ended. As Iraqi troops surrender to the mighty American forces, Sergeant Troy Barlow (Mark Wahlberg, The Big Hit) finds a map jammed up the ass of one POW. According to Special Forces Sergeant Major Archie Gates (George Clooney, Out of Sight), it is a secret Iraqi Ass Map that reveals the location of untold Kuwaiti riches seized by Iraq, including several million dollars in gold bouillon. Gates is two weeks away from retirement and looks at the potential score as reward for a career in the military, as well as a good way to avoid his latest detail – a media escort to NBS reporter and 5-time Emmy runner-up Adrianna Cruz (Nora Dunn, Saturday Night Live).

Back in Detroit, Barlow is an office schlub and the father of a newborn baby, so he quickly agrees to accompany Gates (who is not his superior officer) on the heist, which should only take a few hours out of their boring post-war afternoon. His company mates, Chief Elgin (Ice Cube, The Player’s Club) and Vig (Spike Jonze) round out the group, the latter two practicing skeet-shooting with Nerf footballs on the way. They see a cow blow up from a cluster bomb and they discuss the proper term for people native to the area ("Dune Coon" vs. "Sand Nigger" vs. "Camel Jockey"). And when they find the Iraqi village that is believed to contain the bunker full of gold, they are surprised to find that Saddam’s soldiers are more concerned in quelling citizen uprising than they are with the four marauding American servicemen.

In the bunker, the men find stack after stack of stashed wares – from coffee makers to microwaves to food processors – and the deeper they go, the better stuff they find, culminating in dozens of suitcases full of heavy gold bars. They’re able to drag it out of the bunker, but because this happens only thirty minutes into the film, circumstances temporarily veer the four off of their original plans of thievery. The soldiers are confronted with the horrors of war as Iraqi citizens, inspired to retaliate against Saddam’s troops by President Bush, are being massacred. They see oil fires, tortured of prisoners of war, the murder of innocent children and oil-soaked birds – all of which make the gold bouillon seem unimportant. Well, maybe less important. They’re still Americans.

Co-written by John Ridley (U-Turn), Three Kings is a devastatingly dark war film. There is a scene where the filmmakers use a cadaver to demonstrate the effects of a bullet ripping through your innards. There is a shootout that may even be cooler than Keanu dodging bullets in slow motion in The Matrix. The direction and editing are absolutely top-notch, using a variety of styles from montage to repetition from different angles. The slick cinematography (Tom Sigel, Fallen, The Usual Suspects) will bring back memories of Star Wars as the troops walk across the vast desert (not to mention those Tusken Raider-looking things).

Want to know who survives? Take a look at the title, Three Kings, which implies that there are three main characters. But there are really four (Clooney, Wahlberg, Cube and Jonze). Now take a look at the three names above the title. Sorry, Spike – the name of the film predicts your demise before the first frame is shown. May as well have changed the name to Three Kings and Spike Jonze Gets Killed.

There are a few other problems, namely the likelihood that they would have been able to get that much gold out of the continent without anyone noticing. The plausibility of three soldiers agreeing to follow a man they don’t report to is also kind of questionable. The roles are sort of pigeonholed – the retiring guy (Clooney), the young kid (Wahlberg), the black guy (Cube) and the hillbilly (Jonze). And don’t get me started on the part where Clooney’s Gates actually becomes ER’s Dr. Ross, sticking a very Pulp Fiction-like needle into the chest of comrade that has just had his lung deflated by enemy bullets in order to relieve his chest pressure (using the cadaver to show air filling the chest cavity and slowly crushing the other lung). But these issues are pretty minor in the grand scheme of this fantastic new film.

1:53 – for graphic war violence, adult language and some sexuality