Jarhead, even though captivating and beautifully shot, ultimately does not deliver. The talent in this film is beyond belief with Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard playing off of each other and forming an odd bond in the mist of a political war for oil and adding small parts from smooth talking Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper, talent alone can’t carry a film at this magnitude. Director Sam Mendes missed so many great opportunities to pull the audience in and give us a reason to love it. A great deal went unexplained, so much just happened for no apparent reason and many of the political aspects are never confronted. Unfortunately I found myself wondering how much longer this film could possibly go on, I felt the boredom and anxiety the Marines felt as they sat in the desert waiting for combat to happen.

Jarhead
2 & 1/2 Stars

Based on the book by Anthony Swofford, Jarhead makes a vague attempt at following suite to characters and style, but never gets there. So many moments in Swofford’s memories and story were short lived on the screen and left to our own imaginations. Following Swofford (Gyllenhaal) from a quick and rough boot camp onto his battalion assignment goes by in a flash accompanied with short moments that attempt an explanation of why he joined up and a small closed door glimpse into his life. But no hard core facts or reasoning to why Swofford joined the Marines or his hook-up on being such a smart mouthed mess up.

Instantly assigned to a special sniper unit by Staff Sgt. Sykes (Foxx), Swofford is thrown directly into the “suc” and off to war where the troops wait around for something, anything, to happen. Sykes getting listless himself, constantly torturing his troop with playing football in 112 degree weather while wearing their protective gear or building pyramids in the middle of the night in a down poor, gets boring and tedious, but not any more of a problem then watching the interaction between the soldiers. A continuous dialogue of “what to do in the desert while waiting for a war” is monotonous and never mixes up, Swofford goes on and on about masturbation, digging holes, shooting practice, and such, this is as dry as the rest of the story.

There are a few disturbing, funny and open mouth moments for the audience to take in, but not many. Watching the soldiers get hyped up on war films is quite disturbing, seeing how they react to people getting blown up and total destruction of human life as if they are getting psyched for the game maybe factual, but not something the public would be very comfortable with. The scenes in the desert with raining oil and fires blazing from the tanks dropped a few jaws, but pretty does not an Oscar make. Poignant moments in the film would be when the troop stumbles across a charred traffic jam with all the pedestrians fried to a crisp and Swofford wonders off to get sick, he sits down with a group of blackened soldiers who looked to be eating or playing a card game and states that it has been a pretty messed up day to them. Something about that scene really stands out in my mind as such a surreal moment. Another moment is when Swofford and Troy (Sarsgaard) finally get the opportunity to get their first kill. All set up for the shot with approval from the commander (Chris Cooper), the moment goes still, hearts start racing and in an instant the moment was stolen. Troy breaks down, he throws a huge fit and gets out of control, he wanted that kill, he wanted the reason for him being in this war to be validated and it was taken away from him.

An ending that is as depressing as the rest of the film following what is left of a Marine after the fight is over. Mendes gives us a view to what happens to each soldier when they return home, jobs, babies, marriage, break-ups and suicide, there is no happy ending here, just life.

Overall people are getting their fill of wars in the desert every night on TV and honestly some of the scenes we get to see on TV are a great deal more personable and interesting than what Jarhead delivers. We know Desert Storm happened and we have seen one war film after another that has accomplished a great deal more in style, content and character investment, Jarhead will not be listed amongst it’s better predecessors. Jarhead has the talent, the cinematography, and the opportunity at a story that could have been a contender, but fell short in pulling in the audience and left much of the story empty and dull.

Sam Mendes (American Beauty, The Road to Perdition) directs Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain) in this adaptaion of Anthony Swofford’s excellent bio, Jarhead.  A war movie without a war, Jarhead’s excellent cast and great cinematography save this film from being a waste of time, but you’ll find yourself playing ‘what war movie was that from’ quite a bit in between the good bits.  Whether Mendes is adrift in a film that lacks an internal life for it’s lead, or whether he’s unable to find a cinematic language to fill in for Swafford’s astoundingly good (and unfilmable) prose, Jarhead is yet another movie where one is left with a ‘what was the point of that’ feeling. 

Jarhead
3 & 1/2 Stars

The first Gulf War seems an unlikely topic for cinematic review, as nothing much happened that could carry a traditional war film.  David O. Russell’s excellent Three Kings pulled it off by using the conflict to jump into a heist film, and a black comedy, but Sam Mendes’ latest effort, Jarhead, seems unable to tread any ground that hasn’t already been paved.  I remember my first reaction to hearing that Anthony Swofford’s Marine life memoir was being given the Hollywood treatment being roughly ‘How the hell are they going to make that book into a movie?”, but I’m sad to say that neither myself of Mendes seemed to come up with a good answer to that.

An almost ridiculously buff Jake Gyllenhaal takes on the role of Swoff, a young, bright individual that inexplicitly makes the decision to join the Marine Corps; an act which eventually lands him in Kuwait as a sniper in a conflict fought more with heavy artillery.  His squadmates are a collection of barely functioning time bombs, his staff seargant (Jamie Foxx in that most trite of roles: the gruff leader) is somewhere between his mentor and his tormentor, and all Swoff can think about is either killing some Iraqis, or his faraway girlfriend, who may or may not be cheating on him.  Needless to say, the waiting game of war and the surrealness of military life combine to unsettle Swoff to the point of near madness.

For a film whose trailer is chock full of explosions and guns, 99% of Jarhead is simply an account of the minutiae and infinite bordedom that fills the life of a soldier deployed in a conflict that has no use for him.  While that might make for an interesting study of a man, ultimately we’re locked out of Swoff’s life and internal process.  A suprising result, considering the flashbacks and narration that pepper the film.  At the end of it’s running time, we know no more about Gyllenhaal’s character than we did in the beginning beyond the anecedotal details of various moments of his life.  He’s a closed book, leaving us to scratch our heads in bewilderment over his oscillations from smart-ass slacker, to blood thirsty killer, to suicidal loon, and back again.  While his body is ridiculously buff (a fact not unexplored by the film;  He’s half naked for goodly chunks of it, and full-on frontal naked for a scene), Gyllenhaal’s boyish face and deep-set eyes hide his internal process from curious on-lookers. 

Peter Sarsgaard (another facial cipher) has what should be the more interesting role as a quietly dignified man defined by an organization that doesn’t want him, but he’s given only a single scene in which to shine (and shine he does).  The rest of the cast is an interchangable mix of war movie stereotypes which, while a little trite, probably represent an accurate cross-section of our modern enlisted man.  Jamie Foxx is another character given nothing to do, but is further saddled with a colorless and thankless role, leading one to wonder why he signed on to the project in the first place. 

That’s not to say that Jarhead is without it’s charms or merits.  There are more than a few moments of comedic gold, but once the laugh dies down it’s difficult to not go through the mental checklist of war movie moments.  Full Metal Jacket?  Three Kings?  Just like Ragu, it’s in there.  And so on and so on.  It’s a hard game to escape from when even the film itself seems to be playing along, with it’s multiple references to Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket.  While it’s charms are many, it’s just hard to care much about what’s going on.  Much life Desert Storm itself, the film teases us with the potential for more, but repeatedly fails to deliver anything of substance.

 

More than anything I’m disappointed by Jarhead because I simply wanted to like it more than I did.  Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard are exceptionally talented actors, but can’t work past the limitations of the script.  The film is beautifully shot, but what’s the point if what’s show ultimately leads us no where?  Do we really need another movie to tell us that war fucks up it’s participants?  I’m not sure many of us haven’t already learned that lesson.  The film posits itself as apolitical, but there’s blatent messages to be found in everything from the dialogue of the soldiers to the text telling us how many troops have been deployed.  Perhaps this is the logical result of a generation of filmmakers who have not experienced war themselves.

In the end, this is a film to see for the performances, not the story.  It’s enjoyable, but eventually it’ll fade from memory, leaving only the vague impressions.