Jarhead

RATED: R for pervasive language, some violent images and strong sexual content.
RUNNING TIME: 123 MINUTES
PLOT: Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows Anthony Swoff, a third-generation enlistee, from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty in the Middle East during the Persian Gulf War.STARS:
Jake Gyllenhaal (Swoff), Jamie Foxx (Staff Sgt. Sykes), Peter Sarsgaard (Troy), Chris Cooper (Lt. Col. Kazinski).

Gord Burt 3 Stars

The makers of Jarhead clearly wanted to avoid the politics surrounding the first Gulf War even as they pay tribute to the marines, the jarheads, who went to Saudi Arabia to fight. There is a long cinematic tradition of focussing on the ground-level experiences of combatants rather than on policy and strategy, and this this movie carries on that tradition. But the result is a movie rife with ambivalence and boredom.

Jarhead is adapted from Anthony Swofford’s best-selling autobiography of the same name. It’s a profane, in-depth book alive with wit and anger and everything you’d expect regarding men who are trained to kill. The film tries to convey not only the terror and thrill of military life, but also the frustration and tedium. The challenge becomes how to evoke a jittery, anxious state of boredom without inducing it in the audience.

Jarhead features bright young actors like Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and Oscar winner Jamie Foxx. But Jarhead will be a tough sell for the marketing department because people can get their fill of Iraq and war on the nightly news. Plus, the film (to its credit) all too successfully captures the boredom and impatience of its characters to serve as out-and-out entertainment.
The film does capture the machismo, crude humour and surreal nature of war. Gyllenhaal’s and Sarsgaard’s characters are smart and savvy marines who grow disillusioned with their mission while Chris Cooper, another Oscar winner, is a smooth-talking commander, who sells troops on the vital meaning behind any mission.

The movie’s largest (and dullest) section takes place in the vast nothingness of the Iraqi desert where everyone digs in and waits ... and waits and waits some more. You keep waiting for the inevitable, climactic battle, but it never comes. So with no enemy to fight, the conflicts turn inward. Squabbles break out, scorpion fights are staged and guys rag on each other about what wives or girlfriends are doing back home (wait until you see the video one wife sends her husband).

Jarhead is a minor movie about a minor war, and a film that feels, despite the current situation in the Middle East at the moment, remarkably irrelevant. If you want some superb war movies rent Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan or Platoon.

Erin Harde 4 Stars

Unlike every war movie that has come before it, Jarhead manages to present a whole new angle of war; this not an action movie, but an inaction movie. It is about the nothingness and emptiness that happens in between the action, the side of combat that doesn’t make the news, the side that is forgotten about on the big screen. It’s a bold move by director Sam Mendes, and one that isn’t going to work for a lot of viewers. But for some, Jarhead is going to be a more poignant, enlightening film than celebrated war flicks like Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbour.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Anthony Swofford narrates the movie, describing his involvement in the Gulf War. As a new recruit, he is assaulted in every way his fellow jarheads and drill sergeants can think of. There’s a few laughs usually followed by a cringe either because of the crudeness or the violence, like when he mouths off to his superiors and ends up having his head slammed into whatever inanimate object is closest. He is chosen to be a sniper, a real honour, and is then shipped off to Saudi Arabia where their mission is to protect the oil wells. This is where the whole lot of nothing happens - Swoff notes the highlights of sitting in the desert for months on end are hydrating and masturbating. But waiting for action gets to them. They are now trained killers with itchy trigger fingers. One of his comrades can’t wait to kill someone; they know he’s deranged but the feeling is contagious. They also go crazy with paranoia, imagining all of the men their wives or girlfriends are sleeping with.

When they get operation Desert Storm, they get a taste of the action, but it doesn’t satisfy. They are still anxious, empty and paranoid. A quick flash forward shows they never get over it, maybe because they saw too little action, maybe because they saw too much.

Jarhead is anything but an American war propaganda film. It might even be the opposite, as shown when the marines are given orders not to speak freely to the media, to say they love withering in the desert sun without their family, that they are honoured to serve their country. Watch for excellent performances by Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx and Peter Sarsgaard.