"Jarhead"

Rating: 8/10 (24 May 2006)

"Jarhead" tells the true story of Anthony Swofford, played here by Jake Gyllenhall. Swofford was trained as a Marine, and in particular as a sniper. He went with other troops to fight in the first Gulf War, but in the end spent most of the time in the desert dying of boredom. When they eventually saw action it was for only a few days, and the frustrated Swofford never even shot anybody with his sniper rifle.
This film is really very good in some places. There's a wonderful sense of black humour throughout, although at the beginning during the Boot Camp sequences it does get kind of "Sgt. Bilko" in silliness.
Things take a darker turn very suddenly when, during the training sequences later on,one of the soldiers-in-training panicked and ended up dead on barbed wire. This sets the pace for the rest of the film - moments of dark, twisted humour suddenly changed into shocking war images.
To be honest, it can be argued that this is nothing new - there are moments of dark humour in "Saving Private Ryan" for example, though you'd have to be incredibly morbid to find them laugh-out-loud funny - but Sam Mendes, the director, seems to set the tone well - we don't get too much humour, we don't get too much war imagery.
The problem is finding a way of showing the boredom of the soldiers without boring the audience, and I think that Mendes does this well. As Swofford, Gyllenhall shows another side to his increasingly impressive calibre of acting - he's done teen, heartthrob, genius, gay cowboy, and now soldier - is there any part this guy can't play well? Gyllenhall is impressively supported by a number of good actors, particularly Jamie Foxx and Peter Sarsgarrd. The music, by Thomas Newman, is once again a successful collaboration between Newman's notes and Mendes' images.
But there are a few problems. As with every war film, sentimentality enters in at some point, though thankfully not until near the end of the film. When it comes to the end of the film it also didn't seem to be a satisfactory ending to me. Sure, we saw what happened to the characters after returning from war, but can't we have a little bit more info? What does Troy (Sarsgarrd) die of for example? Finally, to me the most disappointing part of all in terms of music, we hear the sample from Kanye West's "Jesus Walks", but where is Kanye over the end credits? That would have been a fitting end to the film.
Despite these problems,I found "Jarhead" to be an entertaining portrayal of one man's experiences of the reality of war - it's not always "Apocolypse Now" after all. I think that others will be divided over this because there does not seem to be a clear stance on whether or not this film is anti-war or not. Personally, I don't think it matters. What matters is that this is a story about a man who goes to war - not a propaganda piece such as "Farenheit 9/11". It's up to the audience to judge whether or not this film is anti-war.
8/10