Every war movie is different, every war movie is the same?

Rating: Null/10 (16 February 2006)

"Jarhead" is an unusual war movie, but not without similarities with other war movies. Some of the absurdities remind one of "Catch 22". The occasional eerie visual images bring to mind "Apocalypse now" although the backdrops are very different, one being the desert, and the other tropical swamps. As to a war movie without any fighting to speak of, the most recent one that I can remember is "Buffalo soldiers", which is just as much as a black comedy as a war movie. "Jarhead" however, despite all its absurdities, is far too chillingly real to be a black comedy.
It starts out like many other war movies, Anthony "Swoff" Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), having "got lost on the way to college", joins the "jarheads" (marines, so called because of the shaved heads). The training sequence is handled with the normal mix of comedy and gravity (one guy got killed in a "real bullets" training session). The excitement is then pushed to a frantic height with a scene in which the marines are watching the legendary helicopter attack sequence in "Apocalypse now", joining the rousing chorus "Ride of the Valkyries" from Wagner's "Die Walkure". The stage is set for some real action as the marines finally set off to join the Gulf War. Up to this point, we might have been watching "Dirty Dozen".
Things then take a sharp turn, as the desert takes over - the desert, but no enemies. Air power has developed to a point where enemies are wiped out long before the group troops gets a chance to encounter any. What the audience now face is the torturous boredom of Swoff and his partner Troy (Peter Sarsgaard)  as snipers work in pairs, a spotter and a shooter. Instead of grand, heroic deeds of war, we see the mundane, pointless existence of these marines in a desert in the middle of nowhere, promised a war that never comes.
The desert itself looms always ominously in the background. In one particular encounter that a few patrolling marines have with a band of camel travellers, the approach of the latter recaptures some of the (but not fully) eerie feelings in Lawrence of Arabia (which I had the good fortune to watch again, the nearly 4 hours of it, on a movie screen) in the first appearance of Omar Sharif.
Nor is the devastating impact of war entirely missing in this movie. It has in fact been handles in a very clever way. In one scene, we see the chilling aftermath of what must have been a ferocious attack, motor vehicles in complete wreck and bodies burnt beyond recognition. We see Swoof wandering about the ruins half-stunned and throwing up. Later in the movie, when the audience sees a swift and deadly air attack at a distance, its mind must inevitably be drawn back to the horrific carnage witnesses earlier. This clever reversal of cause and effect doubles the devastation of the impact.
In the end, it is the loss of individual identity that screams out loud at the audience, as we see Troy begging frantically to be allowed just that one sniper shot before it's all over, when the air attack hits. "They'll all be dead in a few minutes anyway, so why can't we have that shot". Unfortunately, the answer form the superior is "They'll all be dead in a few minutes anyway, so why bother." There goes Troy and Swoof's last chance to pretend to themselves that they matter in this war. But then, ironically, the jarhead never forgets the Gulf War, just as a Vietnam veteran never forgets the Vietnam War, although for difference reasons. "We are still in the desert", says Swoof, haunted by the memories that refuse to go away.
Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard have both turned in excellent performances. Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx is solid as the staff sergeant, a role that does not offer a great deal of scope. Academy Award winner Chris Cooper has a couple of eye-catching (and ear-catching as well) cameo appearances and the lieutenant colonel.
"Jarhead" is not for everybody (one person actually walked out in the show I went to) but should please those with the appetite for movies that try to be different.