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Who would have thought that David O. Russell, director of such archetypal Gen X comedies as Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster had this rip roaring Gulf War version of Kelly's Heroes in him? On paper it sounds like a one-from-column-A war picture, with bad-ass American GIs attempting to make off with a fortune in Kuwaiti gold bullion during the closing days of the Gulf War, but it transforms itself through its sheer inventiveness into something else entirely. As the film progresses, this stock war film becomes a lacerating commentary on American military and foreign policy. It asks troubling questions about the aims and the outcome of the military action in Kuwait and Iraq, and it doesn't offer easy answers. The performances, particularly from the increasingly charismatic George Clooney, are uniformly excellent, and the dialogue is sharp as a stilletto shiv, but the real pleasure to be had from the movie is its visual style. Russell has attempted to find a new way to film warfare that takes its cue from the weird documentary style of the opening of, say, Saving Private Ryan, only it pushes that graininess of film into a higher contrast and winds up with an oddly gritty, oddly surreal ambience. There has never been a war film that looked like this before.