Forget What You've Read

Rating: 8/10 (6 November 2005)

Forget all of the negative hyperbole you may have read in so many other reviews of Jarhead, the third film from natural-born filmmaker Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition). His latest feature may not end up being the Oscar-bait many were expecting, but it's a remarkable take on modern warfare nonetheless.
As with any genre film, viewers automatically compare a new entry to the films that came before it. Jarhead's opening barracks scene is eerily and unfortunately reminiscent of R. Lee Ermey's classic sequence in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. This film occasionally wears its influences on its sleeve, but it's usually in service of the greater story being told. As one character bemoans late in the film, upon hearing The Doors blasting from a stereo, "This is Vietnam music! Can't we get our own music?" These feelings are at the heart of this atypical look at an atypical war.
Jake Gyllenhaal gives an outstanding performance as real-life enlistee Anthony Swofford, whose book provided the basis for the film. While his training hardships aren't exactly ignored, his story focuses more on the dismay and resentment of troops who wound up in Iraq in 1991 only to wait, wait, and wait some more. What happens to a man who is trained to kill and then never gets to fire his weapon? This question and other overlooked realities of our presence in Iraq are handled intelligently in this gorgeous, well-acted, unjustly maligned picture.
Rating: B+