Jarhead (2005)

Rating: 1/10 (5 July 2011)

"Sir, I got lost on the way to college, sir."
This is the story of the first Golf War, as seen by one Anthony Swofford, a 20 year old soldier in the US Marine Corps. The war movie that results is quite bad. It has a bad director, a very, very bad script, bad acting and bad special effects.
The director is Sam Mendes, the man behind American Beauty and Road to Perdition, movies with many Oscars between them, which makes me wonder: "What happened to Jarhead? What is wrong with it?" I'm not quite sure. As I was watching I kept feeling that something is not quite right and that somebody messed up big time. Looking back, I guess the directing is to blame for this. There are long - too long - scenes, there are a lot of empty spaces in between, there are way too many scenes where something starts and then just fizzles. It's just as if the movie is suddenly struck by amnesia: "What? What was I doing here? What's going on in here? Who? Me?" and so on. The framing is decent, for the most part, but what we see is just too linear and unidimensional and the camera rarely moves.
The script is very poor. The story is told as if there is just one guy in the world and everybody else is there in passing. Most of the actors have nothing to do, they just come and go in a constant parade, without establishing any real connection with the viewer or the movie. Maybe the camera and the directing is at fault for staying too far and too cold, but there is something very wrong with the script. As I red the Trivia section after the movie, I saw all these character's names and I was like "Corporal Who? Who was that guy?" I just couldn't identify any of then except the main character. Or care less. Many reviewers have said that this is an insult to the US Marine Corps and it sure felt like it. An insult to the viewer, too.
The acting is quite bad across the board. Jake Gyllenhaal is usually a good actor and so is Jamie Foxx. In this movie, however, they came up short and empty. Jamie Foxx not as much, maybe, but Gyllenhaal does nothing but stare at everything around him with a bovine look on his face. I understand that much of the dialog was improvised, to give it a feeling of authenticity, but all it managed instead was long empty pauses and wordless scenes, which is the script's and the director's fault.
The special effects are just wrong. They couldn't light up a couple of barrels of petrol and make a proper fire? They had to make it with CGI? What kind of moronic idea was that? Anyway.
Jarhead. A big slap in the viewer's face. Avoid if you can. 1/10.