Intermittedly interesting look at the calm before no-storm-at-all in Gulf War One, which weeps more for the loss of oil than the loss of life amidst many other frustrations.

Rating: 5/10 (16 May 2010)

Poor Jake Gyllenhaal is in the desert and going mad in Jarhead. There are no Arabs to shoot and no girlfriend around to penetrate over the course of the long, hot and dusty tour he's doing over there during Gulf War One in Sam Mendes' 2006 film. What is Jarhead other than a slightly annoying film about rather annoying people itching to engage in warfare and spend their time indulging in frat-boy infused humour? The film is a dead zone if you came looking for an interesting look at what it was like fighting on the frontline of The First Gulf War, the air of relief acting as a faux smoke screen over the sense of frustration towards the end when the troops realise the war is over and some of them never even got to fire their weapon; never even got to feel the manly sensation of having killed someone. So much so that the film needs to rely on a veteran of the Vietnam War to join them on a parade vehicle once they're back home so as to raise our awareness, or remind us, of what war is actually like when it becomes obvious the last hour and a half may have been a little tough, but guys in the U.S. Marines have had it far worse in the past.
Jarhead's a bit like that, scattered and unfocused in tone and overall attitudes to its subject matter; as if Mendes himself, a director I like a lot, identified how lacklustre the source material really is and tried to tiptoe around that fact. The film is unashamed in its calling to mind past items so as to tell us what war was REALLY like; its imagery persistently calling to mind past war films of old in the clearing out of the squad toilets alá Platoon; the clear referencing to Full Metal Jacket in the boot camp training sequences and the generality of how that is structured along with the frontline action; the oral referencing to Apocalypse Now in the Ride of the Valkyries music the troops boom out of their speakers and the worst instance of which sees the opening few seconds of 1978's The Deer Hunter begin playing on a television, before inexplicably cutting to a homemade pornography movie of one of the squadies' partners with a neighbour. Such is the film's attitude to its study: the worry about what's happening back home and the instabilities of these people's home-life over the difficulties and harsh realities of wartime service. For a better film about the stagnant perspective of conflict, check out 2007 Israeli film Beaufort.
Gyllenhaal is indeed the lead, a certain Anthony Swofford who is in a sniper regiment in The Gulf, and being a sniper, the film has an excuse to shoot everything down his scope, so he's able to 'look' at everything through it and there's that sense he's 'looking' through his scope and 'observing' everything around him first hand in a first person perspective. Swofford has very few decent memories of life; a troubled childhood and not an awful lot going on in the early years of his life, he sees the Marines as a sort of second chance or re-birthing into another life or world. His raw and relatively unflinching introduction to this life is by way of a dopey slow motion christening, the spreading of dirt and grime over his forehead and facial area as he informs us his combat experience "has begun".
Jarhead initially looks through pro-war tints at the idea of war and the prospect of warfare, by the end I think most of the troops are still the same. War's treated as if it's something to look forward to in regards to these people with their "go get 'em" attitude accompanying a generally upbeat, pacey aesthetic the piece carries. By the end, it turns out to be something that came very close to happening but, annoyingly for them, didn't quite materialise: it's there; it comes (to a degree) and then it goes – so what? By the time the boot-camp sequences are over, Jarhead slots down into a groove of waiting and stewing; the troops forever angry at the lack of action and women as well as the painstaking attempts to relieve boredom by strenuous routines of having to clean one's rifle amidst other menial events they didn't travel there to do. The problem here that the film makes its points very quickly, Jarhead being one of those rare war films that asks for pity from the audience for its characters without any of them ever really having faced any warfare.
How would those that liked it have taken to a piece similar to this that revolved around young troops, American or otherwise, about to embark on the D-Day campaign? What about a WW2 film set on the Eastern front about young trigger-happy, pro-war Russian troops about to siege a German stronghold to a bumpy, upbeat aesthetic with sprinklings of crass comedy before ending as the siege begins? We'd feel a little robbed, like we'd spent 'x' amount of time with unpleasant people and then it ended. Maybe WW2 is too much of a taboo, but clearly there's no problem in documenting tours served in Gulf War One in this manner. Whatever the reason, the film is a celebration of soldier machismo and resilience in a location the film goes to painstaking lengths to paint as really hostile and tough. At the end of The Thin Red Line; Platoon and Saving Private Ryan, we are asked to weep for men young and old whose lives are forever changed in their experiences; at the end of Jarhead, we are supposed to feel for dumb-dumb in their attitudes Yank soldiers whose tours in the desert has instilled them with a faux sense of accomplishment and provides them with stories to tell that are infused with a pseudo sense of accomplishment, and it doesn't work.