Critical reception
Three Kings received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 94% rating, based on 128 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Three Kings successfully blends elements of action, drama, and comedy into a thoughtful, exciting movie on the Gulf War."[15] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 82 out of 100, based on 34 reviews.[16] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F.[17]
Actor Spike Jonze greets Bill Clinton at screening in the White House.Peter Bradshaw says, "A strange flavour, but this is an enjoyable and intelligent action film."[18] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four, and said that "Three Kings is one of the most surprising and exciting movies I've seen this year" and that the film is a "weird masterpiece, a screw-loose war picture that sends action and humor crashing head-on into each other and spinning off into political anger".[19] David Edelstein of The New York Times said: "It remains the most caustic anti-war movie of this generation."[20]
The director's commentary of the film reveals that then-incumbent President Bill Clinton liked the film so much that he had it screened for his staff, friends and advisors at the White House.
In Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy Matthew Alford called Three Kings "an unusual ideological product on Hollywood terms, which begins to break down the official history of the Gulf War [...but nevertheless...] suggests that the problems of Iraq can be solved, and only solved, by the application of US force". He observes that Russell "sheepishly indicated Three Kings' ideological consistency with the 2003 Iraq War" when Russell met George W. Bush in 1999(?) and said he was making a film that would question his father's legacy in Iraq. Alford quotes Bush as responding to Russell: "Then I guess I'm going to have to finish the job, aren't I?"[21]
Box office
The film opened at number two at the United States box office for the weekend with a gross of $15,847,636, behind Double Jeopardy's second weekend gross of $17 million.[3] Exit polls suggested the film played to an older audience than anticipated.[22] The film grossed $60,652,036 in the United States and Canada and $47.1 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $107.8 million.[3]
