Colleagues - Perhaps the most intelligent movie produced by mainstream Hollywood since "L. A. Confidential" is in danger of dying a premature death. "Three Kings" did not do as well as expected during its opening weekend, October 1-3, and is widely rumored to have been dropped by Warner Brothers promotions, even though the studio paid $50 million for it. Theater owners in some parts of the country requesting one of the ads that use a "masterpiece" blurb are being told to cut and paste it from other publications, according to one story. The film has already been badly marketed, with its trailer emphasizing the "macho soldiers out on a lark" and caper aspects, and making a confusing jumble of the rest. Given this faulty marketing, and the fact that the film's stars are more identified with action movies than art, is it any wonder that people who crave intelligent filmmaking don't know that this is one to treasure? If this film does not find its audience pretty immediately, what will be the repercussions for other studio film projects that dare to do things like explicitly condemn George Bush's conduct of the so-called "Desert Storm" war against the Iraqi people? That spend some screen time actually thinking about what modern war does to its participants? That are as visually playful and inventive as the young Truffaut of "Shoot the Piano Player?" This film was written and directed by David O. Russell, who gave us "Spanking the Monkey" and "Flirting With Disaster," and has given us here a story every bit as smart and sharp and full of heart, but on a much grander scale, than those comedies. Is it possible that we could use the Internet to turn the fate of this provocative film around? What if most of the thousand or so people on the two lists I am posting this plea to (H-Film and Screen-L; I apologize to those who receive this twice) were to take friends and family to see this movie this weekend? And if they then spread the word to other film-lovers lists and groups. Maybe by the films 4th weekend it could sell more tickets than is sold its first week. If we can pull this off, we will have successfully spoken up for more intelligent, artistic filmmaking from Hollywood. If you want to know why I consider this film to announce the arrival of a major new filmmaker, check out my review at the website listed below. Stephen Brophy - Cambridge, Massachusetts. Visit my review archives at http://www.stephenbrophy.org ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite