Despite being inherently watchable, the strange thing about “Jarhead” is the sense of cinematic déjà vu that comes along with it. For the first ninety or so minutes of its 123 minute running time, it goes from essentially being a “Full Metal Jacket” remake to being an early 1990s Gulf War I version of “Platoon”. Obviously the film is aware of its predecessors from which it’s obviously derived, as the jingoistic, crazed characters go so far as to cheer at other notable modern war movies onscreen, such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Deer Hunter”, as well as read thematically similar books such as “Catch 22” and Marvel’s award-winning “The ‘Nam” comic books. All of this referenced material has one thing in common – it’s all Vietnam-based work. Perhaps that’s the touch of Vietnam vet screenwriter William Broyles Jr. Or maybe the filmmakers behind this well crafted film are of the ilk who tend to view most every modern military action as “another Vietnam”, particularly the big ones like Operation Desert Storm, and the current Iraq war. Not that the current war fits into the story, but the mere fact that this film has materialized now can’t help but evoke associations with what is happening overseas. And if the oblique last line of the film is any indication, that’s no coincidence. But apart from the broader, universal themes of this cynical and irreverent war film, the on-screen association between the two Gulf Wars pretty much end there. Perhaps surprisingly, “Jarhead” is not a political protest movie, but rather a bleak, autobiographical character study. Beyond its seen-it-all-before opening ninety minutes, “Jarhead” manages to find its uniqueness in the odd fact that it is a war film with no war.
In the early 1990s, the United States sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers over to the Middle East, gearing up for a full-blown war with Iraq over the fate of the tiny country of Kuwait. Tons of money was spent, and a great many lives were disrupted for a mission that ultimately was resolved in a questionable manner at best, despite whether one believes the U.S. went too far or not far enough. “Jarhead’ is apparently a true story, adapted from an auto-biographical novel of the same name written by disgruntled Gulf War I vet Anthony Swofford. For this reason, the unflattering and often hostile depictions of U.S. Marines cannot be completely disregarded as unfairly biased, but all too often these psychologically damaged gun-toting misfits in their chocolate chip cookie camo gear are more disturbing and unlikable, never commanding the respect that deployed troops deserve. Director Sam Mendes would probably argue that these are stark, human portrayals of young people thrust into insane circumstances under murky pretenses. I can go with him on that, but the fact remains that “Jarhead” comes off as harsh and upsetting, unfairly leaving us to inappropriately wonder why anyone would be crazy enough to fall into an outfit like this. In other words, viewers with close ties to the U.S. military are likely to be very offended.
In the film, Jake Gyllenhaal plays the original author’s namesake, “Swoff”, a young Marine who finds himself slowly and completely wrapped up in the unstable brotherhood of his fellow soldiers, and the home-front paranoia they effortlessly instill. (Is his girlfriend remaining faithful while he’s away??) He goes from being boot camp whipping boy to enduring the long mind-numbing wait for war in the desert, where he eventually becomes that guy we’ve seen in so many modern war movies. You know - crazed, glass-eyed, and mechanically spouting his ingrained military doctrine while pointing his rifle at a fellow Marine in an intense moment of insane confrontation. Gyllenhaal does this as well as anyone who’s done it before him, and he does an exceptional job of carrying this film. Deployed with him are the always great Peter Sarsgaard as a dour truth-sayer, and Jamie Foxx as their cool and wizened sergeant. Over the course of their mission, they all portray the feeling of gun toting blue-balled delirium in their own way. They practice their maneuvers and stave off the boredom in all manner of ways recommended and not recommended by the U.S. military. Chris Cooper turns up as a USMC sergeant, which made me wonder if he is intended to be the same Marine character he played in Mendes’ “American Beauty”. (The answer turned out to be no, but with all the latent homosexuality and homophobia brewing just beneath the macho surface of this film, it may as well be yes.)
Director Sam Mendes hits a visual homerun with “Jarhead”. His carefully composed and brilliantly color-timed images of the Marines illuminated only by the burning oil fields of Kuwait are some of the most incredibly striking of the year. This sequence alone is reason enough to see this film on the big screen, but Mendes’ heavy-handed symbolism gets a bit long in the tooth at times. Overall, of the director’s three big screen efforts thus far, this may place second, in between the excellent “Road to Perdition” and the over-rated and often-contrived “American Beauty”. As I walked out of “Jarhead”, I was admittedly uncertain of what I thought of it, but the fact that I’m still pondering it, to some degree, days later does indeed bode well for it. Gulf War I may not have been the warless Vietnam Part II that this film often makes it out to be, but we all know it also wasn’t the slickly packaged American triumph that we were fed through the media back when it was current. “Jarhead”, in all its familiarity, manages to stand tall among the best and brightest of Gulf War I films, even if its characters fall short as Marines.
- Jim Tudor