Half Metal Jacket

Rating: 7/10 (16 August 2008)

Jarhead is an innovative war movie which held my attention well and does have its moments. It's actually a lot like Full Metal Jacket, without being exploitative of the former, and unfortunately, also without being quite as good.
The movie follows the autobiographical account of a marine sniper (Surveillance / Target Acquisition = STA) in the first Gulf War. This was a fairly boring war, in that the US military fully exploited their technological advantage to bomb Iraqi forces into submission, which didn't leave a lot for the ground units to do. Kind of like the current Iraq war in reverse. The bottom line is that the author, although highly trained and motivated, saw practically no action.
The movie is (as far as I can judge) realistic in that it reproduces the soldier's perspective pretty well: you're never really on top of things information-wise, and doubly scared that you might either buy it or not see any action at all. The latter comes true for the narrator, who doesn't even get to fire his rifle once. Overall, he probably left the arena feeling that despite all his efforts, he contributed absolutely nothing to a war that was fought out by "zoomies" (planes and rockets).
The movie doesn't have a lot of action, and consequently struggles a bit to fill its length. I didn't like the scenes which seemed to have been taken out of some gay softporn flick, with lots of cute but moody underwear models lounging around in army outfits and being a bit too physical with each other. The burning oilwells-scene was visually overdone. But there are many great scenes, too, such as when the STA team beg for being allowed to kill at least one Iraqi before an airstrike because "It's not fair, he's going to die anyway!". Or in the way the movie displays the interactions between the comrades. Or when the returning unit are being greeted by an enthusiastic but clearly encumbered Vietnam veteran, who gives them a scary view of what's in store for them once the parade is over.