A soldier's story redefined

Rating: 9/10 (7 March 2006)

"Jarhead" is a war film unlike any other before it because the story concentrates on the personal narrative and experiences of a single bored soldier and his companions in the United States Marine Corps. Its narrator, Marine Corps sniper Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), is the kind of American kid from a military background who convinces news reporters in an interview that he signed up out of idealism, has strong faith in his country's leaders, but at the end he quips that he signed up because "he was dumb enough to sign a contract."
"Jarhead" is more distinct from other films before it because there is little action, little heroics, and lots of swearing and standing around because they have nothing better to do. At one point late in the film, Swofford and a comrade have set up a sniper post, get orders to take a shot and just when he's about to pull the trigger, a fellow marine shows up and warns them to step down for fear the shot may give away an incoming air strike. Swoff's comrade begs for one shot because their hellish training and wasted days doing nothing has led up to this one point in time for glory, but ultimately comes no big reward or payoff.
The film opens as Swofford has just entered basic training and offhandedly assumes he has made a mistake by enlisting. He's immediately signed on to a unit of rough-housers, screw-ups, and retards (and for some reason the man who assigned him to this unit didn't lead us on to believe he was kidding). Based on his own 2003 best-selling memoir of the same title, Swofford's narration ranges from scathing indictment of his situation to a seething resentment of it; he does provide some comedy, though it doesn't come easy for the most part (even though there is one funny part when a tent gets burned down, which has to be seen to be understood). He counts the days, cleans his rifle, debates past sexual conquests, thinks of masturbating (a lot), and worries about his girlfriend - who may be cheating on him.
The men in his unit are some of the saddest sacks to ever join the Marine Corps. Under the command of Staff Sgt. Sykes (Jamie Foxx), he trains them hard for battle. Sykes loves his job, loves the Corps, loves training the men, and can't wait for the moment of combat for his men to shine. And soon enough, they're shipped off to Saudi Arabia a.k.a. "the suck" as part of the U.S. government's "Operation Desert Shield" and their first mission is to guard the oil wells for their friends, the Saudis, from the Iraq president Saddam Hussein and the Republican Guard. This mainly consists of sitting around, braving the soaring desert heat, giving interviews to reporters, throwing around footballs, drinking lots of water, and trying desperately to maintain a sense of sanity.
He does make a friend eventually, his spotter Alan Troy (Peter Sarsgaard), who is the aforementioned comrade who goes nuts during that sniper scene. In their first 170 or so days in Iraq, the men are pumped for action (in a motivational speech by Chris Cooper, no less, in a cameo), swearing constantly (with at least 278 uses of the f-word and its variants), getting drunk, and thinking about girlfriends or wives back home who may be cheating on them (and photos of those unfaithful women are posted on the infamous "Wall of Shame"). There is no tension, and when they think they're about to be attacked by eight ominous, approaching Iraqis while on patrol in the desert, Swofford goes to investigate and when he returns to report to his comrades, it turns out that "someone shot three of their camels."
The term "jarhead," the self-describing moniker of men in uniform, is defined early in the film as the way that a soldier looks in full combat gear, with a head, given greater definition by the crew-cuts, is shaped like a jar. "Jarhead," the film, is a soldier's story told from a young man who knows what's going on but not why. His whole war lasted "four days, four hours, and one minute" - that was his war, Anthony Swofford's war. It was four days, four hours, and one minute or so of nothing but sitting around and killing time.
When it came out last year, I remember a storm of controversy swelling up around "Jarhead" because Hollywood seems to be riding the wave against "Iraq, part II," though I believe Anthony Swofford and director Sam Mendes have repeatedly insisted the novel and film are apolitical, despite the latter's open contempt for the war and our government, as well as some of the negative war reactions of actors including Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard. And it's true: the film doesn't take sides. But all it does is show the tediousness and boredom of a conflict that to them, never actually was, and leaves it at that.
9/10