Not for Jarheads

Rating: 6/10 (9 November 2005)

This is one of the most beautifully crafted, moving, strong and poignant war films ever made. Sam Mendes excels with equally beautiful and horrifying images of war and machismo-soldier-making, Jake Gyllenhaal lives up to his "next big thing" tag (and could slip under the radar for an Oscar nomination solely for one harrowing scene where he wants to shoot a team member) with the rest of the cast providing astonishing performances and the film flows effortlessly from beginning to end and from scene to scene.
In the war movie genre this will be labelled, with "Black Hawk Down", as a modern military movie. The tale is just as much about the individual as the war. The title may draw a macho audience who will feel somewhat cheated by the ever increasing promise of death and gore that never materializes.
Comparisons to "Full Metal Jacket" are inevitable as the film is distinctly split in two parts  training and combat. However such simplistic labels are as redundant for this as they were for "FMJ" in the context of modern warfare. The troops battle boredom more than they battle the enemy. Make no mistake, this is an anti-war movie. You never see Colonel Kurtz's "horror" of war and this makes the film stronger. It is the pointlessness of conflict, soldiers killing people for a livelihood where their decisions are never under their own control. That war is absolutely good for nothing has never been so beautifully burnt on screen.
Here Mendes is in his element as character, instead of conflict, become the film's essence. I have never seen a film where so little has happened and I have been so gripped. A must for war movie fans and a definite for everyone else.