Can A Movie About Boredom Really Be Good?

Rating: 4/10 (11 March 2017)

A few weeks prior to watching "Jarhead" in its entirety, I saw some clips of it on television and thought that perhaps it would be the "Rambo" of our generation. Unfortunately, I was severely disappointed.
Basically (Spoiler Alert), the plot of Jarhead follows a Marine Unit (focusing on one solider played by Jake Gyllenhaal) that is called into active duty during Operation Desert Storm. However, "action" is the furthest thing from the minds of the Marines, as they (in the words of their commanding officer) do nothing but "train, hydrate, train, hydrate some more, and maintain a constant state of suspicious alertness". Even when the unit does get the opportunity to carry out a designated mission, they are quickly and easily booted aside by the ever-popular air attacks. As the Gulf War ends, the entire unit has not fired a single shot in aggression throughout the entire campaign.
This film did one major thing right, but also seemed to generalize about a number of things that I did not appreciate:
What works is the focus on Gyllenhaal's character and the mind-set the he embodies through the entire process. He is pretty much lost when he enters the Marines, but then goes (in stages) from being utterly confused, to angry for enlisting, to ready to fight, to confused once again about his role in the entire process. Though uncomfortable at times (as we prefer to think of our returning soldiers as no less than out and out heroes), it was interesting to see a sampling of the emotions that likely beset our young men and women serving abroad.
The main reason the film turned me off a bit, though, is the generalization it made about the U.S. military. Sure, I understand that the ground troops may not have been as effective in a war fought out in the desert, but I cannot bring myself to believe that all military life (while not bombing the crap out of something from above) is boring and pointless. The Marines are still an elite combat unit that serves their country to the utmost, and I don't believe for a second that they find their task to be as boring or inane as director Sam Mendes portrays it. It almost seems as if Mendes (although not overly preachy about it, which was good) was using the example of the Gulf War to cast a pall over the entire current military structure/usefulness.
Thus, while Jarhead is a decent film that touches on some uncomfortable social/personal issues surrounding enlistment in the U.S. military, it ultimately fails to live up to my "next Rambo" tag due to a few over-generalizations that could very easily be used to unfairly steer audiences into an anti-military frame of mind.