Film Review: Jarhead (dir. S. Mendes 2005)

Of course, had to go see this one, a Marine Corps memoir, based on the trailers/commercials and the book, which I recommend. As usual, the book is better, but the film is really quite a spectacle. The subject matter is ostensibly the Gulf War, the one where we didn't go into Baghdad, but the real subject is life in the Corps. The author/protagonist, Anthony Swofford, has a great deal of affection for his Marine mates, at least some of them (there are a few he despises, but that's just the way things go), and mixed feelings about his time in the Corps, etc. The tone is therefore somewhat difficult, because this is really a first-person slice of life film, and it doesn't really have a message. Now, there is some irony at the end ("Saddam Hussein, he's finished!"), but that's irony, not a message message, if you get my drift. (And let's be honest, if you don't get my drift, I don't think you're coming back to the blog, now, are you?)

Instead, what the film gives us is one Marine's story. A Marine sniper in the Gulf War. The story starts out with some cliches, but then goes in some interesting directions (like anyone's story). There is some wonderful inter-textuality, in the sense that the film shows clips of another war film . . . kind of along the lines of a previous post. The war itself is anti-climactic and ends before Swoff and his mates get to do that which they are trained to do: kill. Indeed, they come close but get called off at the last minute. There is something wonderfully odd about this moment: Swoff wants to get his kill, but he is shaky when it comes time to pull the trigger, and in later years, he is better off not having killed. But he cannot forget (dipping into the book now) that, at that moment in time, he wanted to kill, not because he was blood-thirsty but because that was what he was trained to do. So the book/film are an interesting study in a certain mindset. Sort of: I'm both happy and sad that things turned out the way they did. But we've all been there, right?

The film itself is quite beautiful, without being too arty about it. The oil fire scenes are amazing, and the scene with the oil-drenched horse, which I don't think is in the book, is pretty unforgettable. The performances are all good, including Peter Sarsgaard (I didn't check the spelling), a strangely androgynous version of Kiefer Sutherland. (And I don't mean that androgyny is strange, but that this guy has a strange vibe about him, which makes him seem, well, kind of crazy.) Gyllenhaal is what you would expect. And who doesn't love Jamie Foxx?

Still, I think that this one might just get passed over at awards time. It might get a nomination for adapted screenplay or direction, but I don't see acting nominations coming out of this one. Not because the acting isn't good to great, but because the performances are not quite what you're expecting.

Worth seeing, even if you're not a fan of war movies, in general. Because it's not much of a "war" movie, really.