Jarhead:
Collector's Edition DVD
(Universal Region 1 NTSC DVD)
(2005)
review by Head Cheeze

“That's Vietnam music... can't we get our own music?”

It's a line that is uttered as a helicopter roars over the Kuwaiti border, its speakers cranking out a classic Doors tune as troops march forward in a desert as non-descript as the war they were fighting in; a war that barely lasted long enough to merit much more than a footnote in history, let alone its own soundtrack.

Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Anthony Swafford, a young soldier who, as he puts it, “got lost on his way to college”. Through his eyes and thoughts, we see the deconstruction of innocence as he is molded into a marine sniper; a hardened killing machine with a jones for the “pink mist” of the perfect head shot. Swafford thinks he's got his chance when he and his squad are sent to the Saudi Arabian desert as a part of Operation: Desert Shield to face down a mad dictator's million-man army. However, as the weeks in the desert pass, Swafford watches as his window of opportunity is rapidly closing thanks to the modern machinations of war, backroom diplomacy, and the smoke and mirrors nature of the conflict his generation were doomed to be a part of.

Based on the book by the real Anthony Swafford, Jarhead is a “war movie” that lies somewhere thematically between Catch 22 and Full Metal Jacket. Equal parts drama and comedy, Sam Mendes portrait of the modern soldier is both an effective and entertaining film, as well as a sublime anti-war statement that works precisely because it doesn't try to be one. There's a few subtle jabs at the current war in Iraq, to be sure (most notably in an exchange between soldiers in which one tells the other that once they overthrow Hussein, “there will be no reason to come back here”), but they are few and far between, and Jarhead is better for it.

Instead, the protest here is like a generalized swipe at the idea of war in general. We see soldiers hyping themselves up for battles that never come, relishing in the idea of taking a life, and somehow becoming less human for it, despite the fact that none of them have fired a single shot. It suggests that, regardless one's actual role in a war, innocence and humanity are qualities that are “checked at the door”, so to speak; qualities that are lost the moment one puts on the uniform and becomes a cog in a military machine at wartime. One could almost view this film as a protest of the military itself, as it seems to suggest that the things one learns and experiences while enlisted makes a full readjustment to “normal life” something of an impossibility. It's a sobering message, and makes the current situation of our armed forces seem all the more dire.

The film is wonderfully shot, and features dynamite performances from Gyllenhall, Peter Sarsgaard as his gung-ho battery-mate, Troy, and Jamie Foxx as Sykes, the sniper squad's intensely dedicated Sergeant. My only major gripe with the film is the ending, which, while based on fact, was presented in a way that felt trite and formulaic. Were this not based on a soldier's actual story, I'd have written it off as one of those unnecessarily downbeat Hollywood “Where are They Now?” endings that often serve as codas to this sort of film.

The Collector's Edition DVD from Universal is a two-disc affair sporting loads of extra features, including a pair of feature-length commentaries, several featurettes, deleted scenes (including expanded looks at Swofford's fantasies that are only hinted at in the film proper), cast video diaries, and much more.

While promotional campaigns suggest that Jarhead is the war movie for our generation, I don't agree. This really isn't so much a war movie as it is a meditation on the modern soldier's state of mind, and for that reason alone, this is an important, relevant, and timely piece of must-see cinema.