Entertaining for a while, but where's the needed release?

Rating: 6/10 (22 November 2005)

Jarhead - slang for Marine. It describes the high and tight haircut that resembles a jar. The movie follows one such Jarhead's (Bubble Boy's Jake Gyllenhaal) experiences as a Marine from boot camp to training to Desert Shield to Desert Storm. We watch as the war swells from 14 minutes and 5000 troops in the desert to 175 days and 575,000 troops in the desert.
The Marine's labor? They wait. The movie audience's labor? We wait. For something, anything to happen. The soldiers make scorpions fight each other and they bet on who will win. They dance around naked to Naughty by Nature's OPP. I nearly vomit. They pull pranks. They wait for letters. They get bored. Very bored.
I hesitate to call Jarhead a "war movie" because it has little to do with the actual war. It focuses more on how the soldiers try to fight their boredom while waiting for some action. This is an interesting take ... up to a point. But after a while the audience starts to become as frustrated as the Marines. These guys want to kill. They trained to kill! An exasperated Gyllenhaal even asks, "Are we ever going to get to kill anybody?" I was wondering the same thing. I wanted to see a little fighting. Maybe a cool sniper kill or two. Just like the soldiers, I wanted some release.
Maybe it was the director's intention to put the audience in the shoes of the weary soldiers. If so, then mission accomplished. The problem with this approach is that it hampers the storytelling. There's no smooth flow to the narrative. After a while you're left wondering if there is a point other than, "Hey, there were some soldiers who didn't see much action and they got bored!" As such, Jarhead feels like a dramatized documentary.
I was a little concerned that the movie would be a big political statement, but it stays away from trying to polarize its audience. Any parallel lines drawn between then and now are subtle and temperate. Some guys wanted in, some wanted out, and some just looked like they had nothing better to do. One of my favorite moments comes when Booty Call's Jamie Foxx talks about how there's nothing more he wants to do than be a Marine. This scene, set against the backdrop of the dark desert lit by burning oil fields, is a great visual to behold.
But ultimately I never got the release or the closure that I was waiting for. Instead of sending the audience home on a high note, the director tempts us to slit our wrists at the revelation of the post-war fate of one of the main characters. We're not told how this character came to his fate, though I have my assumption, but the "how" doesn't matter. No explanation would dilute the depression that we're left with.