This movie fails to hit its target

Rating: 6/10 (28 January 2006)

Since American Beauty, a Sam Mendes film is much awaited for and it's difficult to believe that this is only his third main feature outing. Mendes skilfully and faithfully renders Anthony Swoffords autobiography Jarhead to the big screen. The film follows Swoffords short career in the US Marines and his selection and specialist training as a Marine sniper in the first gulf war.
The film initially follows familiar ground of isolation, and gradual loss of personal identity and values: the loss of ethics  'thou shalt not kill' is discarded as liberalistic bulls**t; and the infidelity of wives and girlfriends augments the sclerosis from the world he left behind. The unfamiliarity and physical remoteness of the gulf, and the stripping down of each soldiers personality into one-shot 'killing machines', shepherds the company of men together. Branding each other with hot irons becomes a mark of fellowship. Swoffords nearest companions are his hard assed Drill Sergeant Sykes (Foxx), and his enigmatic and reflective spotter Alan Troy (Sarsgaard). These are practical relationship based on the purpose of the job. They are a team united by the killing power of their skills and equipment. Nothing more.
The specialist training ensures than Swoffords skills can only be used rarely. A sense of ennui deliberately pervades the movie, and for the ordinary soldier masturbation provides the only liberation from the months of boredom and madness of the war. When, in those few moments action does come they rush to it willingly, hoping to get that one shot in, hoping to fulfil in that one action the whole purpose of their training and their entirely raison d'etre. When Swofford finally gets his chance to shoot an Iraqi Officer, this becomes an anti-catharsis as in the second before the trigger is pulled he is ordered to stand down. He finishes his war without firing a single round. The film is one of successive personal losses (individuality, girlfriend, and purpose). The crushing loss is saved for the end when they return to the US as heroes'. They finally lose their dignity and self respect when a ragged Vietnam vet gate-crashes their tour bus to sing their praises. They see in him the forgotten and unsung hero, and themselves as the fraudulent undeserving.
Although, seen as a sterilised a media event, Swofford rightly reminds us that that the psychological damage to the ordinary soldier would pervade their lives, and in a sense they can never leave the Gulf. For that much he deserves our respect and sympathy. This is compounded by the suicide of Alan Troy's and his inability to return to the ordinary life he resented.
The film does have large measures of black humour: Playing (American) football in chemical suits for the benefit of the press, only to complete disrobe anarchically for the camera when they got fed up with the set piece; Gyllenahaal dancing naked in a tent party, wearing nothing but a strategically placed Santa hat for modesty; Gyllenhaal miming Revelie in the absence of a bugle. These are sane things to do in an insane situation.
Mendes and Swoffield have been unfairly asked to reference this movie to the current conflict in Iraq. Despite being different conflicts same terrain, the movie is quietly an unconventional anti-war movie and as such would not sit well with the American psyche if declared as such. The leitmotivs of isolation, futility, dehumanisation sit well with previous anti-genres like Paths of Glory, Catch 22, and of course Apocalypse Now. And this is the central problem of the movie. Though a heart rendering and genuine recollection of memories from Swofford, the film is almost pastiche of movies that we have seen before. We can easily compare Foxx's drill Sergeant Sykes with Lee Marvins 'Reisman' in the Dirty Dozen. We can compare Gyellenhaal's Swofford with Martin Sheens 'Willard' in Apocalype Now. We can genuinely compare the insanity, violence, and surreal nature of war in this movie with a trenche of others. The interest in this movie is simply the relation of its story to current events. An America public which is denied realistic news and information about its current military involvement looks to a film that emotes sentiment and lost dreams for direction.
A crisp script, stunning photography, and sterling performances by Gyllenhaal, Foxx, and Starsgaard , give this film the esteem it deserves, but I doubt that it will enjoy a long shelf life. Gyllenhaal deserves special comment as he clearly has shrugged off his teenager persona (its only three years since Day After Tomorrow), but with three of his movies released in the same month the variety and depth of roles he's undertaken can be undermined by each successive film release. Gyllenhaal's Swoffield, and Foxx's Sgt Sykes are entirely plausible but Sarsgaard's Alan Troy remains too enigmatic. Swofford 'got lost on the way to college'; Sykes could have had a £100K a year job, but 'likes war too much' (reminiscent of Robert Duvall's Killgore); but we have no explanation as to why anti-hero Troy is here or what makes him tick, apart from the throw away remark that in war he could 'be someone'.
Whereas Michael Moore polemisized America's current Gulf engagement, Mendes de-politicises the earlier engagement, and this flaws the film. Audiences deserved a braver movie, and sadly they didn't get it with this one. They deserved better