Apparently forgetting all about Three Kings, there are those out there (studio spin doctors, mostly) who have been touting this as the "first major film about the Gulf War." That's Bush I's Gulf War, incidentally, not our current quagmire.
Don't believe the hype.
Jarhead is the new film from director Sam Mendes, who does an awful lot of rambling and posturing here, while showing precious little of the insight that elevated his American Beauty above its pretensions. What Mendes gives us this time is a war movie where the war is barely seen — or much of anything else of interest, for that matter. This might be his whole point, of course — something about modern warfare being a largely technological exercise devoid of heroism or human drama — but that doesn't make the film any less dull.
There's not much excitement, tension or depth as we watch a bunch of newly-minted marines go through basic training, clean toilets, talk about wives and girlfriends, and do a whole lot of sitting around while waiting for something to happen. The soldiers don't wind up seeing combat, and neither do we, until the last 20 minutes or so of this overlong outing, at which point we get a handful of arresting images of the killing fields of Kuwait (although nothing matching Werner Herzog's Lessons of Darkness), but not much else. The real war always seems to be happening somewhere else, and all the characters can do is complain about it.
You might say that Jarhead is an anti-war movie — not in the sense that it's against war, but in the sense that it almost deliberately seems to be going against the grain of what we expect a war movie to be. Then again, Mendes is a smart enough filmmaker to know that you don't have to make a boring movie in order to depict boredom. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Saarsgaard, Lucas Black, Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper.
Jarhead (R) Opens Nov. 4 at local theaters. Call to confirm. 2 1/2 Stars
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2005.