Boys Go to Late 20th Century R Rated War

Rating: 6/10 (7 November 2005)

"Jarhead" is a visually stunning celebration of making an R rated film about enlisted men, ground level troops from basic training through homecoming in a late 20th century war. And that's it.
The first third is a repeat of every movie ever made about basic training, including "Full Metal Jacket" and even having Jamie Foxx channel Louis Gossett Jr. from "An Officer and A Gentleman." Just that now we get to hear a lot of variations of the "F" word in conversations and scatological marching chants. The squadron is even set up as the diversity of the new Army (there's an amusing interchange about unfamiliarity with author Anthony Swofford's Anglo-Saxon surname), as the inevitable kid from Compton now replacing the World War II stereotype of the boy from Brooklyn, with two Latinos, one dark, one light, with one a Cuba Libre proponent. That's just about all we learn about each of these guys, though at least we can tell them apart more than the guys in "Black Hawk Down." Peter Sarsgaard is mesmerizing but his character stays a bit of a mystery throughout.
Are these any different than scenes from an Queda training camp would be? Just as generals fight the previous war (the lesson learned here was to have overwhelming force and popular support), these guys get hopped up on Viet Nam War movies, though the message of "Apocalypse Now" seems lost on them and there's only one plaint for their own music (there's actually surprisingly little hip hop on the soundtrack though Thomas Newman's soundtrack and other selections are very effective). ). This section is tedious and loses the audience too soon.
The second third is the build-up to Gulf War I as it slowly changed from Desert Shield into Desert Storm, and which we at home knew a lot more about through CNN than these troops out in the desert did (and there's no sign of other members of the coalition), as they only get propaganda briefings a la the truism that the first victim of war is the truth.
This scabrous section is basically Boys Gone Wild with Boredom, that veers close to HBO's "Oz" territory and you can practically smell the latrines and body odor. The R rating could have been pushed much further here, as the full extent of what isolated men are like together is covered clinically in the voice-over that is only useful in this section and is otherwise too annoying throughout. A beefed up Jake Gyllenhaal is explosive in representing the marines' disintegrating mental state. The military does seem to have learned some lessons from this readiness experience to keep troops in touch with home, as seen in the recently canceled FX series "Over There." The scenes of press interviews have lost a bit of punch since we've seen since embedded reporters.
It is effective at showing how a brutal misogyny can develop in these situations (with a toss-off about fertility as a half-hearted balance) such that the women in their lives become The Enemy in the bitter "Wall of Shame" of cheating wives and girlfriends. (There's a nasty vignette of a wife turning her husband's fondness for "The Deer Hunter" back on him.) It's a small stretch to understand how in other cultures and at other places rape and pillaging could become a weapon of war as a release. (Homophobia is not dealt with.) War looks like a controlled outlet for testosterone.
The third section is all about Roger Deakins' cinematography, from the blinding white out of the desert to the burning oil wells, to friendly fire and collateral damage. It is starkly beautiful.
There are some political points here as gradually the sniper marines realize they are irrelevant in an air war, but we know that won't be the case in the Gulf War Part 2 that's now urban guerrilla battles. "Three Kings" was much better at combining the grunts' and the wider cultural and political perspectives, though there's some token discussion about dissent. The film reinforces another truism that troops in battle fight for their buddies, not for ideology (presumably in Queda as well).
The concluding coda is heavy-handed, including the closing narrative point: "All wars are different. All wars are the same." "Best Years of Our Lives" made the same points and almost the same story lines.
While Chris Cooper and Dennis Haysbert seem to get a kick out of strutting around as superior officers, I doubt the military can use this as a recruiting film, as there's brief points about inadequate equipment and risky issued drugs.