good adaptation of Swofford's memoirs

Rating: 9/10 (6 November 2005)

The title of the book is Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles. The other battles are within Swofford and his struggle to pull some meaning out of life. It seems that each time Swofford finds a goal or something important, circumstances in life take it away from him.
He wants nothing more to be in the Marine Corps while growing up, to participate in a war. Once in, his efforts to make a difference and his sniper's passion for the perfect kill are so diluted that he quickly wants back out. The sniper's ideal experience is overrun by politics, bureaucracy, personality conflicts, worries about his girlfriend's infidelity, and nature of the first Gulf War, which emphasized spending monumental amounts of money to fight the entire war by air and avoid losing support at home through infantry casualties and up close reporting of the Hell that even winners of wars insist that it is.
There are one or two scenes in the movie where things happen a bit differently than in the book, and some compartmentalized scenes from the book (mostly that take place back home) are left out, but it's extremely close, both in events and in overall tone. Many of Swofford's words are repeated in the movie's narration verbatim, no characters are combined to save time, no dialog is made up to give the movie a more comedic edge, jingoistic edge, anti-war slant, or anything of the sort. The book is a slice of life for a U.S. marine, make of it what you will, and so is the movie. Trumpets, waving flags, gory wounds, stirring speeches, and international politics do not impede or help Swofford's struggle to make something of himself, and although some may think that makes it rather pointless, in a way, that IS the point. The military cannot turn a scumbag into a hero, Saddam's crimes do not give your life meaning, being thrown together with a bunch of guys does not make you brothers, you must work for it like you would in the most ordinary of circumstances, and when Swofford gets back home, the same unemployment, family problems, alcoholism, and lack of direction that he and his fellow recruits once left are still waiting for him, and though the movie doesn't get into it, the book shows how a few of those new battles are won and lost by his former squad mates and the author himself. In that sense, some may find it boring, it certainly does not emphasize harrowing close quarters combat in the way that Black Hawk Down did, nor does it have a neat story like Three Kings, but it is an enlightening look into what impacted the minds of men in Kuwait as told by a very good writer. In that sense, it is very close to the recent documentary "Occupation: Dreamland" which follows an army squad in the current phase of the Gulf War, and the ordinary characters you see are very much the same.
The filming was beautiful, the score emphasized the tension the men felt in Kuwait while the U.S. was still implying Iraq could easily win the war ("we're expecting 30,000 casualties the first day"), and the acting is top notch from Gyllenhaal, Sarsgaard, and Foxx. The characters are entertaining but still seem realistic, and 99% of the dialog is taken from the book, which is as true and accurate as Swofford's memory.