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"Jarhead" stars Jake Gyllenhaal, from left, Laz Alonso, Peter Sarsgaard and Lucas Black wait out the war.Review
Sam Mendes' 'Jarhead' fails to fire off any rockets
Movie about Gulf War is really just about waiting -- and waiting and waiting.
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Nicely acted, beautifully shot and pretty much devoid of action and context, "Jarhead" has to be considered one of the year's biggest failures, simply because so much talent went into a film so empty.
This is a movie that answers the burning question, what if they gave a war and everybody sat around bored? Well, that's what apparently happened with the Gulf War, and while this may make for an interesting historical footnote, it doesn't drum up much dramatic tension.
Director Sam Mendes ("American Beauty") is trying to get emotions running high about a film in which emotions rarely run high. It's the old conundrum of trying to make a film about nothing; in the end, you come up with nothing. And it's the rare audience that wants to lay down good American money for nothing.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Anthony Swofford, a recent Marine recruit who immediately feels he's made a wrong move. The opening sequences may be derivative of hundreds of others of you're-in-the-army-now flicks, but they're still amusing as Swofford makes his way through boot camp and onto an elite assignment as a sniper, working for Sgt. Siek (Jamie Foxx).
After your basic series of training challenges, Swofford finds himself shipped off to the Middle East, where he and his unit wait to get things rolling in a war against Iraq. After a while there, they wait some more. Then they wait some more. And some more.
Soon it becomes apparent this isn't a movie about war, it's about waiting, and the toll that can take on men's' psyches. Here's the problem: That toll just isn't very interesting.
It might have helped if the characters involved had been fleshed out, but they aren't. We don't really know what Swofford did back home, although there are flashes of a troubled family and a sexy girlfriend. We don't know his future aspirations. If he's supposed to be everyman, he instead turns out to be nobody.
And we know even less about his fellow soldiers. Peter Sarsgaard plays Troy, Swofford's best buddy with a marred past. Lucas Black is Kuhn, a Texan with both a conscience and a level of cynicism. Both actors do a great deal with very little, but it's not enough. Who are these people? Why should we care?
It's going to be a surprise if many people do. The Gulf War may well have been a time of frustration and impotence, but simply making a movie about frustration and impotence doesn't cut it. The easiest comparison is to David O. Russell's "Three Kings," which used the bleak boredom of the war as a backdrop to a story that gave it context. "Jarhead" doesn't come close to doing this.
Nor does it offer any real feel for the experience of being a Marine. In a much-hyped scene shown in commercials and previews, Swofford sits near a grave and listens to Sgt. Siek thank heavens that he's in the Corps.
It looks like the prelude to a great monologue, the kind of speech that captures the essence of a film.
Well, it captures the essence of "Jarhead" all right. The speech is over in about 20 seconds and tells almost nothing of why Siek loves being a Marine. He just does. Hoo-rah. We're apparently supposed to mystically understand all the things he didn't express.
Sorry, if people aren't going to actually do things in a film, it would at least be nice if they could talk about things. The Gulf War may well have been filled with emotionally clotted people with fuzzy pasts who mostly did nothing, but who wants to watch a movie about them?
Give us action, give us characters, give us ideas, give us dialogue. Don't give us "Jarhead."
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