Jarhead (2005)

*** spoilers alert***War is totally useless, and is boring, too. As a pacifist, antimilitarist, conscientious objector in 1976 I loved this movie much more than Full Metal Jacket (spoofed during the first minutes). Boredom, heat, blinding light, friendly fire (23% of US casualties during the First Iraqi war), heavy jokes between brothers in Arms, civil casualties, oil well burning ("Earth is crying"), war finished without a shot.This movie delivers a very clever portrait of the absurdity of (all) war. Beautiful photography, very fine acting (loved Foxx, as usual), etc so why the less than 6/10 Metacritic score?IMO the critics were heavily biased in 2005 because of the SECOND Gulf War. US invaded Iraq just a two years before this movie was released and people didn't want to see how useless can be going to a war that nobody (but G.W.Bush and friends) wanted.Iraqi casualties were 100,000-150,000 if we count only violent deaths. Over one million if we count also embargo aftermath. With Great Power Comes Great responsiblities... and a very huge amount of money. Very huge. Americans dead on September 11 are widely revenged. US won. Game Over.

Years ago I started watching this movie. Couldn't finish it as it was so brutally cynical, hopeless and pretentious. Just stopped in the middle or before then.Recently I started watching it again. Obviously I had erased from my mind the memories of the self-gratifying obscenities, the documentary supposed angle of it, the gross, graphic, and unnecessary sexual content, and all the rest of the F-wording.Well, same again. I remembered that I had watched this movie when I realized that I am going to quit watching, so dull and pretentious it seemed to me with all the nonsense that made it on the director's camera and in front of the weary eye of the viewer. That's when I realized: "Ah! Now I remember this movie! I could not keep on watching the flick so I quit!" Then I quit again.And decided to write a review to explain this phenomenon. How frustrating a movie has to be to remember it only by the fact that you had not been able to bear to watch it in the first place?There is one good point to it. At least these characters did not talk about their hemorrhoids. Well, I am not 100 per cent sure as I did not finish it. Maybe they did in the second half which I did not watch?

Jarhead is a great movie by a great director Sam Mendes.I am not a huge fan of war movies, not as I was at least. But this movie gives us the view of the soldiers on standby immediately before engaging the enemy.In this particular case, the standby troops before the first Iraqi war. All the before action anxiety and bottled up testosterone is portrayed in a very realistic manner, with a superb performance by Jake Gyllenhaal.The trio made by Jake, Peter Sarsgaard and Jamie Foxx elevate the movie letting us see the hardships of soldiers constrained by politics.It is a very good war movie, in another very good example of Sam Mendes's work.

Sam Mendes' Jarhead is the true story of what former marine Anthony Swofford went through before, during, and after the Persian Gulf War. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Swofford a marine who fired his gun years before the gulf war happened but never got to fire a gun during a time of war. This is truly what I consider to be a great piece of movie making and with both Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx giving the best performances of their entire careers in one of 2005's best films. Director Sam Mendes took the time to create a war movie classic, which goes on a par with Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, The Devil's Brigade, The Deer Hunter, and Patton. This move also shows what the marines have to go through constantly. As Gene Shalit of U.S.A Today "A Masterwork, Jarhead is more than a movie, It's an experience.". I truly agree with that because that is actually what Anthony Swofford went through during his time in the Marine Corps. For those people who are veterans in any military branch or are currently serving right now and if you get to watch this movie it will stay with you for a very long time.