Jarhead - Filmless Review

And #10 at that...


In reality, having the 10th Filmless Review be a review of a film that I actually watched isn't particularly true to the concept of the feature... but I have decided not to care.

Jarhead is a film adaptation of former US Marine Anthony Swofford's 2003 novel Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles. It tells Swofford's story of being a 20 year old man thrust into the life of a Marine; from boot camp to the Gulf War. All you should need to know is that it was directed by the same guy that did American Beauty... but I will go on anyway.

Jake Gyllenhall, last seen luring an elderly man's daughter from her caretaking work in Proof, stars as Swofford. We are provided with a gritty look at the realities of his choice Swofford loses his girlfriend, his belief in the cause, and to some extent, his mind. One of the common complaints that I have in other reviews is that the story doesn't really go anywhere. This is true to an extent; the ending (The end of the war... duh) really has very little to do with the story being told throughout. This is an exploration of the characters and the toll that war takes on their psyches, not the events of the war themselves. At this point, I'm going to have to press the brakes on this review because it has gotten WAY too serious.

Today's tangential point that derails a review will be movie trailers. Along with that "nothing happens" complaint, I have also seen reviewers complaining about a lack of action in Jarhead. From a factual standpoint this is true; Jarhead has very little action... in fact, that is a point that is touched upon in the film itself (not going to ruin it... or maybe I did already). My question is this; how can you ever complain about a movie having "too little action"? Who decided that this was supposed to be an action movie at all? Oh... I know, the marketing team. The trailers of Jarhead definitely implied that there was some Rambo-lite stuff going down. Totally didn't happen. If marketing people weren't so stupid, Jarhead would be a bit higher than 56% on RottenTomatoes. Hey, what do I know? Maybe the false-marketing campaign pushed more tickets this week; I know I had a crappy seat because the theater I sat in was packed. Then again, I have reason to believe that those attendance numbers were inflated by the proximity to a college campus full of uber-liberals that salivate at the thought of the military being criticized*... so take that with a grain of salt. We'll see when the box-office charts come out in a couple of days. I suppose I should give some kind of assessment of the movie as a whole. I liked it a lot. Probably the best movie I've seen this year... unless I saw The Aviator in January and not December. Don't really remember.






* - Monticello is a registered Democrat