'Full Metal Jacket' for the 90s? I don't think so.

Rating: 4/10 (1 June 2007)

The parallels are obvious for all to see, but especially in the obscenity-bawling drill sergeant. However, where FMJ tried to tell us that 'war is hell' and that it happens to ordinary people, Jarhead merely informs us that, never mind the story, this is a boring film.
I think that a good film could have been made from this book, a film that would really have shown that life in the military, even in a war zone, isn't always about explosions and death. Instead, Mendes treats us to a bunch of - you guessed it - diametrically opposed unsympathetic stereotypes that we neither care for or about. There's the usual good wholesome boy, the geek, the retarded redneck, the one with the shadowy past (he should have joined the Foreign Legion!), the professional, the immigrant, etc, none of whom are distinguishable from each other in the paucity of their character development. Equally lacking is any indication of just what these characters are doing in the USMC in the first place. The excuse for having such a disparate bunch of backgrounds in Vietnam films is conscription. Just why are these guys there? We're never told. All we are left with is the impression, that seems common from films about the US military, that the young American soldier is, without exception, a mentally unstable screaming moron with no professionalism whatsoever. Personally, I don't believe that is true, but that is how the filmmakers portray it.
So, leaving the cast out of the film (Gyllenhaal was good, but then he didn't really have to stretch himself), all we are left with are some pretty camera shots of sunset in the desert.
This purported to be a film about the 'other side' of war, the boring side. Instead we just get a boring film. Unless you were actually there I wouldn't bother with this at all; as a piece of film entertainment it's worthless.