JARHEAD

Director: Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition)
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx

I have read that Universal Studios is pushing this film as its Oscar contender this year. I feel for Universal if that’s true. I simply don’t understand much of the praise this film has received. Rather than seeing the horrors of a modern war on modern man, the fractalyzed nature of our modern ethos, I saw only some stupid kids doing stupid things, but mostly just being bored. I could certainly feel empathy for their apathy. That’s probably pretty close to how I’d behave if I were there. I could certainly understand the stress of their situation. I just don’t understand what that stress tells me about anything in my life. Maybe I missed it, but I’ll give even odds that there simply wasn’t anything in this film to miss. One serious complaint I have about the film is that there are lines and situations almost directly stolen from Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. I think the director tried to correct this by creating an aura of past films in the story. That is he tried to show how the recruits only knew war through the movies of Vietnam, but it just didn’t work. It felt like a rip off. It was a rip off. It’s certainly a worthwhile notion (that most of us can only express ourselves in others ideas), but it just didn’t work.

Standouts: Jake Gyllenhaal was good, but nowhere near excellent.
Blowouts: It didn’t come together as a whole. Not a single great scene in the entire movie.

Grade: B-

11/13/2005