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Film review

Many images, few messages

Jarhead is filled with moments that resonate, but it passes up the chance for insightful connections to current events in the Persian Gulf.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published November 3, 2005

[{Photo: Universal Studios]

Jamie Foxx, as Staff Sgt. Sykes, plays opposite Jake Gyllenhaal as Marine Anthony Swofford in Jarhead, which takes place during Operation Desert Storm.

What is a war movie without heroism, or an antiwar movie without focus? It looks a lot like Jarhead, which in turn looks a lot like Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now, two gloriously flawed films about the Vietnam experience that couldn't pinpoint any sane rationale for supporting or opposing the fight in hindsight.

Jarhead doesn't have the advantage of looking back, despite the fact that Sam Mendes' film deals with the first Gulf War in 1991. The current U.S. military involvement in Iraq is a sequel, or perhaps a second half after an extended intermission. This is what Mendes doesn't understand, or doesn't have the gumption to address in a movie begging to be more politically insightful or inflammatory than it is.

Mendes has a chance to be topical that Stanley Kubrick and Francis Ford Coppola didn't, since Vietnam was history by the time their films appeared. But his approach to Jarhead, based on former Marine Anthony Swofford's tour of duty journal, barely acknowledges any link to current events. One minor character blowing off steam about oil industry conspiracies and substandard equipment isn't enough.

Without a doubt, this is an expertly crafted film; rather, expertly crafted episodes without much linkage except the consistency of its characters. That may be the way Swofford wrote his book, but it's a dicey way to make a movie. Many scenes are memorable, yet they aren't cohesive enough to form any idea of how Mendes wants us to view the Gulf War(s). Jarhead sometimes comes across as a gung-ho recruitment tool, and that probably wasn't the intention of Swofford's book.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Swofford, a third-generation Marine using military service to live up to expectations. The first reel of Jarhead - greatly imitating Kubrick's first act of Full Metal Jacket - shows him enduring boot camp, complete with a sadistic drill instructor impressing a cult of impersonality on his troops. Swofford's slightly antiauthoritarian style lands him a coveted position as a sniper, that one-bullet quest for what a tough staff sergeant (Jamie Foxx) calls "the JFK shot: pink mist."

After a grueling training sequence, Swofford and his sniper platoon are shipped to Kuwait, where "Saddam Insane," as the dictator's called, has invaded. This is Operation Desert Shield, the U.S. government's attempt to protect oil fields while emphasizing Hussein's assaults on innocent civilians. Playing watchdog doesn't offer any chances for snipers, so Marines are stuck for months in a desert that's getting as hot as their tempers.

This is when Mendes' film loses its target, becoming a series of absurd time-wasters - a football game in nerve gas safety gear isn't very different from water-skiing and surfing in Vietnam - and showing the emotional toll of trained killers waiting before being turned loose. Cheating wives and girlfriends back home are a constant worry, as a Dear John sex video proves to one Marine. Homoerotic horseplay is one way to dodge the subject. Only one Marine, Swofford's target spotter (Peter Sarsgaard), has a distinctly personal issue, becoming the film's lone dramatic arc.

What Jarhead lacks in narrative and polemics, it shores up with some of the most indelible images of any film this year. Mendes finally locates a fresh heart of darkness, his Apocalypse Now, in oil fields where derricks are set afire by Iraqi forces, raining oil in the desert to create a literal quagmire. Swofford's encounter with an oil-soaked horse is nicely poetic. But like every other provocative moment, Mendes lets it slip away, expecting viewers to fill in every interpretation blank.

The cast is uniformly fine, with Foxx especially strong as the conflicted warrior who barely exposes his doubts about the Marine Corps and this mission. Sarsgaard has the most embellished role in William Broyles Jr.'s adapted screenplay, but his understatement of everything is chilling, then crushingly sympathetic. Gyllenhaal is okay, a capable observer and a questionable antagonist, because he just doesn't seem that tough. Like Matthew Modine's Joker in Full Metal Jacket, he's a difficult antihero to hang your helmet on.

It isn't too much to ask for a movie about a past war to comment on a present military situation. M*A*S*H and Catch-22 were about Vietnam, during Vietnam, despite being set in Korea and World War II. Mendes' correlation should be even easier to nail. Jarhead is magnificent machismo and mealy-mouthed politics. It grabs us by our throats, but our hearts and minds have nowhere to follow.

Grade: B

Director: Sam Mendes

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Lucas Black, Skyler Stone, Brian Geraghty, Dennis Haysbert

Screenplay: William Broyles Jr., based on the book by Anthony Swofford

Rating: R; harsh profanity, war violence, strong sexual content

123 min.

[Last modified November 2, 2005, 12:06:07]