A "good enough" movie about military life

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2005)

Anthony Swofford's highly literate 2003 memoir of his days in the Marine Corps, including service as a sniper in the first Gulf War (Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm), gave this film its title and substance. "Jarhead," as nearly everyone must know by now, is slang for a Marine grunt: it refers to the look of the requisite "high and tight" haircuts and also to an image of the new soldier as an empty receptacle for indoctrination. "Jarhead" is a good enough film, but is far from being a great one.
Swofford's memoir was a decidedly interior book, a narrative about the impact of military training and the threat of war on the soldier's sense of identity, about the resulting intense emotions of self doubt, fear and rage, and the indelible killer instinct training presses upon the soldier. Swofford is interested in the combatants' inner life, their souls. His book is an existential essay on the soldierly experience. Since films are all about action and exteriority, not reflection and states of mind, the prospects for a decent adaptation of a book like Jarhead thus seem dim from the outset.
I realize that it's tedious and trite to complain when a film adaptation of a novel or memoir differs substantially from the book. We're supposed to judge a film on its own merits, not by comparison to its source. But when a film adaptation does not quite hit the mark, sometimes the reason becomes more clear if you turn to the written source.
Actually, because films are about action while books are typically about thought and feeling, few adaptations can be entirely faithful to their sources. Of course there are examples, the grand exceptions, where books are adapted well for the screen, but the whys and wherefores of these successes is a whole separate subject. Just to name two recent ones, though: think of Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient," adapted for the screen by Anthony Minghella, or Annie Proulx's "The Shipping News," adapted by Lasse Hallstrom and Robert Nelson Jacobs.
My reason for taking the risk of boring you to death here is to point out that this film's great flaw is precisely that so much is lost in translation from the page to the screen. Because existential reflection has to be jettisoned in favor of action for this film, the core of Swofford's powerful writing is lost and we end up with just another movie about military life.
In the boot camp sequence up front we're reminded of Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket." In the monotony of daily life in the service we pause to recall the drunken boredom of the soldiers in "From Here to Eternity." Gripped by the fear that accompanies waiting to encounter a faceless enemy, we think of Vietnam, of films like "Platoon," or the Russian film "Checkpoint," about the Chechnyan War. Sam Mendes even helps us conjure such reflections by having his grunts whoop it up watching "Apocalypse Now."
But, like I said, it's a pretty good picture. We follow Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), his best buddy Alan Troy (Peter Sarsgaard) and a handful of their mates as they endure training, then a painfully long and idle deployment to Saudi Arabia, and, finally, brief and utterly surreal combat. We see a few scenes from a later time as well, back home, a gathering to mourn the loss of one of the guys. The acting all around is solid. Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard are especially good, as is the ensemble of their buddies, especially Evan James, Lucas Black and Jacob Vargas. Jamie Foxx evinces some serious swagger as the hard-edged Staff Sergeant Sykes, who leads the sniper contingent on the desert.
Mendes, a young Brit who came from stage work to film, is smart: he hires top filmmakers to help him. In "American Beauty" he enlisted Conrad L. Hall, and his son, Conrad W., to photograph and Thomas Newman to write the music. For "Jarhead," Mendes engaged Roger Deakins ("Shawshank Redemption," "The Big Lebowski") for his DP and Walter Murch as editor (Murch edited "Apocalypse Now," "The English Patient" and the "Godfather" trilogy, among many others), and Mendes again used Newman and also Tom Waits to create the score.
So, between the talented acting and the craftsmanship on display here, "Jarhead" is well worth your attention. If you want the existential part, read the book. My rating: 7.5/10 (low B+). (Seen on 11/13/05). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.