funny

Rating: 9/10 (6 November 2005)

very very heavily influenced by full metal jacket, this hilarious take on the Persian gulf war of 1991 is entertaining as hell. sam mendes does a great job directing and the actors portray their characters nicely, but the greatness lies in the writing of the movie. not being familiar with the novel i'm not sure how much of the material came from the book directly, though i would suspect most of the narration is taken verbatim. three things that got me beyond the humor was the spectacular visuals towards the end of the film of the oil fields burning. it reminded me of Dante's inferno, or the book of revelations, literally a world falling apart. the second was the awkwardness of hearing music by nirvana in the movie. i don't know if this is the first movie to feature nirvana on the soundtrack, but it's the first i know of, and being a fan of the music, it sounded out of place. the final thing that got to me was the underlying theme of cuckolding. in the movie it insights paranoia and fear out of all. it seems all consuming in the movie. the deer hunter scene almost made me cringe with embarrassment and humiliation at how something like that must be emotionally and spiritually destructive. men tend to be territorial when it comes to the intimacies of their lovers, and in monogamous societies this is accentuated even more by the feelings of exclusivity that comes with pair bonding. in this light nothing could be more destructive to a man than his "sanctuary" being invaded. other than all that jazz though the movie was rather entertaining and a good watch, it shifts away from the gritty emotionalism of war movies like platoon and tigerland and stands side by side with kubrick's full metal jacket and catch 22 in the infinite absurdities in and of war.
9 out of 10