Jarhead is the only war movie I have ever seen that is not at all about war. I knew this, of course, before I headed off to the theatre, but still - it is hard to leave a film intended to be anti-climatic without feeling at least a little bit unfulfilled.
In fact, I left Jarhead with very little idea as to what the film was trying to say. Sure, it was about brotherhood, about the men beside you - almost every war film is. Still, even the relationships between the various soldiers (who seemed deliberately multi-cultural) never really developed. Everyone feels bad for the man whose wife sends him a tape of her doing the next-door-neighbor, and everyone is happy for the man whose surprisingly faithful wife gives birth while he is overseas, but the sympathy and compassion feels forced and hollow. A couple Marines go slightly crazy and a few get emotionally scarred, but (save for a few demonstrations of anger and apathy) none of the emotions depicted are potent enough to elicit any sort of connection.
The film follows the Gulf War experiences of Anthony Swofford (upon whose memoir the story is derived), and Jake Gyllenhaal does a serviceable job of carrying the audience through the story, and looking sexy while doing it. He joins the Marines ("dumb enough to sign a contract" he tells a reporter at one point) for reasons we may never understand, and drifts through the desert playing football, drinking contraband liquor, getting almost naked with his brothers-in-arms, and corresponding with his girlfriend back home, who (Surprise!) ends up leaving him for another man. Swofford carries an almost unwavering front of ambivalence and apathy throughout his entire military experience, leading viewers to wonder if maybe he just joined up because he didn't have anything else to do.
There isn't a whole lot of plot to talk about in a movie that is essentially about soldiers doing nothing: they train, they ship off, they sit around, they march, and then they go home. In fact, the only casualty in the entire film that I can remember is the unfortunate death of a Marine during basic training who decides he's had enough of crawling around in the mud and stands up to a welcoming barrage of friendly fire. In a scene that I guess could be called the movie's climax (although it's about as much of a climax as Shadow falling into that ditch at the end of Homeward Bound) Swofford is just about to fire his rifle for the first time when Major Lincoln (you'll recognize him from the series "24" and the timelessly classic "It's called a 'Swoop and Squat'" Allstate commercials) barges in and calls him off. This is what the war was like for these Marines: enormous build-up followed by the worst ever case of blueballs.
Staff Sergeant Sykes (played by Jamie Foxx) is really the only character that seems to have any real reason to be in the war. He loves his job. That may not seem like a very good reason to most people, but when you put it in perspective with the aimless wanderings of the men under his command, it starts to look like the best explanation you're going to get. Foxx's performance is undisputedly the film's best, and his character leads the hapless Marines with the gusto that one comes to expect from a career soldier.
I don't doubt that this story is an accurate portrayal of what many (if not most) of the soldiers in the first Gulf War went through, but the fact that it's honest doesn't mean that it makes for an engaging movie. The more exciting scenes in this film are akin to the "filler" in movies like Platoon and Blackhawk Down with all of the excitement seeming to take place just beyond the camera's reach. Even the movie's bookends - a repetition of a short monologue that basically says that whatever a man does after learning to fire a rifle, he never forgets holding that gun - seem a little out of place and misused, as the story doesn't focus at all on Swofford's postwar adjustments (save for the obligatory shots of him visiting his comrade's wake, and stopping by to say "hi" to the girl that moved on).
Like I said before, this is a movie about an anti-climax. I don't doubt that it will hit home with veterans of this (or perhaps any) war, but for me all it did was convey that soldiers in the Middle East do the same things that I do at home: play catch, make fun of their friends, and clean the toilets. Granted, I didn't go into this film expecting two hours of gunfire and explosions, but I wanted to leave with something, and Jarhead sent me away empty-handed.
The Verdict: C+
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