a well MASH-ed American Beauty

Rating: 8/10 (20 February 2006)

I love the smell of anti war celluloid in the morning. Today's session had many male ticket-buyers and their friends staring at this excellent new anti war film by master director Sam Mendes. I was particularly impressed by the superb production values, the exact casting and later in the film, the iconic imagery re created largely in eye fooling miniatures and special effects. This is Donnie Darko in Iraq, 1991. I did not recognize Jamie Foxx and Peter Skaarsgard until late in the film...I almost thought I was seeing a Wayan and a Sutherland. Sam Mendes has a superb eye for detail and composition...and why you are seeing something the way he is showing it. To me this identifies a very good director. I believe JARHEAD is a very post modern take on a sad corner of American war like politics, a sign of waste and cruelty for economic reasons and as the scene on the bus at homecoming shows, a hollow victory wrapped in disillusionment and emotional bewilderment. What a great film! It just makes you cheer for the upside of free speech the USA chants (the same free speech that gets abused when crap like DEVILS REJECTS is made).......... JARHEAD is a perfect 2006 film for Dads to take their teenage sons to and have much to discuss and bond about later. More than anything it shows the evil in the detail of Marine life, the reality of the Mom in Farenheit 911 whose son's life was wasted by Bush's recruitment drive through unemployed teens in miserable US cities laid waste by politics and greed.