Significance? JARHEAD depicts the Bizarre DESERT STORM War

Rating: 6/10 (8 March 2006)

Were intentions graded instead of product, then JARHEAD would be given 4 stars rather than 3, merely because it is one of the few films (so far) that shows the particular idiosyncrasies of that first Bush war, the DESERT SHIELD transforming into DESERT STORM. We have many films that document the mindset of the soldiers from the Civil War through the two World Wars, to Korean War to Vietnam War and each is different. JARHEAD is as much about the changes that have occurred in the American military with the advent of computerized warfare and sophisticated war machines and weapons as it is about the Greed for Oil Dominance that prompted the US Kuwaiti involvement. And for that this film is important and will remain so until something better comes along.
The story is rather minimal and as narrated by the author of the novel on which it is based, Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), it takes a while to become airborne. Swoff is a disillusioned kid who can't figure out how to make life meaningful so he opts for the USMC as a staging zone in his growth. What he discovers is the usual boot camp mentality and training, encountering other men who have both similar and different reasons for joining the Corps: Troy (Peter Saarsgard) has dark issues that remain with him throughout the story; Kruger (Lucas Black) opted for the Corps instead of prison; Cortez (Jacob Vargas) needed money to support his pregnant wife; Cuban immigrant Escobar (Laz Alonso) sincerely is a grateful patriot, etc. Along the way the boys encounter the stereotype DI (Scott MacDonald), the Staff Sergeant (Jamie Fox) and the company commander Lt Col Kazinski (Chris Cooper) as well as the usual variety of testosterone provoked young kids successfully brainwashed to be 'fighting men'.
The bulk of the story after boot camp is the boredom of going to war in the Kuwaiti desert, having nothing at all to do except play dumb games and wait and hydrate, until at last the Staff Sergeant gleefully announces Saddam Hussein is shooting and they are off to actually do what they were trained to do - Fight! But even that is thwarted as they wade through a miserable existence of seeing sky-darkened oil well fires, constant oil raining from the burning oil money holes, losing buddies to friendly fire and mistaken attacks by their own air support. And just at the point when this company of trained snipers (especially Swoff and Troy) gets the chance to kill, the 'war' is over and they go home. And in Swofford's narrative comments he notes how those men will never be allowed to leave the desert experience behind. 'Wars are different, yet wars are the same'.
Jake Gyllenhaal, buffed and shaved headed, gives us everything Swoff represents - as far as the meager script and misguided direction by Sam Mendes allow. He is a fine actor and his range of emotions is what holds the film together. The remainder of the cast likewise does their best to make their shadowy character outlines from the screenplay by William Broyles Jr. as close to three-dimensional as the lines allow. Yes, the film is about a new kind of soldier, one less driven by patriotism and more informed about the commercial greed that drives these fiascoes, and Mendes does allow us to see that. But deeper character development and motivation could have made this a more powerful antiwar statement than a visual excursion of life under the sun of the foreign desert skies. Grady Harp