Jarhead (2005)
Directed by Sam Mendes
Jarhead is a film about a US Marine Anthony Swofford’s experience in the Gulf War. After putting up with an arduous boot camp, Swofford and his unit are sent to the Persian Gulf where they are eager to fight, but are forced to stay back from the action. Swofford struggles with the possibility of his girlfriend cheating on him, and as his mental state deteriorates, his desire to kill increases.
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Part Full Metal Jacket , part Platoon , part Three Kings , Jarhead -- based on the memoirs of Gulf War veteran Anthony Swofford--examines what happens when men, primed for war, are thwarted from ever seeing any action.
It’s pointless to compare "Jarhead" with the host of late 20th century war genre classics that include "Apocalypse Now," "The Deer Hunter," "Platoon" and the end-all-be-all of Stanley Kubrick’s "Full Metal Jacket."
In that regard, Jarheads structure is quite similar to Kubricks approach in the more gratuitous war film Full Metal Jacket.
Sam Mendes’ Jarhead, from a screenplay by William Broyles Jr., based on the book by Anthony Swofford, begins with a U.S. Marine Corps basic-training sequence reminiscent of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), though without a character as profanely hilarious as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (played by former real-life drill instructor R. Lee Ermey), with his imaginative aspersions on every recruit’s sexual propensities.
Of course, it doesn't help that this overly familiar war drama is so reminiscent of other, better movies, including "The Deer Hunter," "Full Metal Jacket," "Three Kings" and "Apocalypse Now."
It's impossible to begin a movie with a rabid drill sergeant barking orders in the face of a fresh recruit and not immediately recall the same sequence from Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket."
It’s pointless to compare "Jarhead" with the host of late 20th century war genre classics that include "Apocalypse Now," "The Deer Hunter," "Platoon" and the end-all-be-all of Stanley Kubrick’s "Full Metal Jacket."
They cheer during the massacre scenes of Apocalypse Now and eagerly quote The Deer Hunter as its credits gear up.
In one scene, the Marines are energized and inspired by watching a screening of the Wagnerian helicopter flights in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979).
Of course, it doesn't help that this overly familiar war drama is so reminiscent of other, better movies, including "The Deer Hunter," "Full Metal Jacket," "Three Kings" and "Apocalypse Now."
In one of the most telling scenes, the jarheads gather to watch the anti-war film Apocalypse Now and roar with delight at a helicopter scene that shows Americans mowing down Vietnamese villagers with eager bloodlust.
There's even a scene in "Jarhead" where the Marines gather for a screening of "Apocalypse Now."
Part Full Metal Jacket , part Platoon , part Three Kings , Jarhead -- based on the memoirs of Gulf War veteran Anthony Swofford--examines what happens when men, primed for war, are thwarted from ever seeing any action.
Even David O. Russell’s "Three Kings" is off limits for resemblance because of the psychologically surgical way "Jarhead" allows its audience to realize its protagonist’s dilemmas that inform his transition into antagonist.
Jarhead is inferior to David O. Russell's Three Kings and lacks the dramatic firepower of Apocalypse Now and Platoon.
Likewise, the film's Desert Storm setting has already been explored by the superior "Three Kings."
Worth seeing, then, but if it’s politics you’re after, you’re better off with Three Kings.
It’s pointless to compare "Jarhead" with the host of late 20th century war genre classics that include "Apocalypse Now," "The Deer Hunter," "Platoon" and the end-all-be-all of Stanley Kubrick’s "Full Metal Jacket."
They cheer during the massacre scenes of Apocalypse Now and eagerly quote The Deer Hunter as its credits gear up.
Of course, it doesn't help that this overly familiar war drama is so reminiscent of other, better movies, including "The Deer Hunter," "Full Metal Jacket," "Three Kings" and "Apocalypse Now."
There is another interesting idea that pops up about the ways that popular culture have influenced and infiltrated the military mindset–the drill sergeant in the opening scenes seems to be taking his cues (as is Mendes) from Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” and we are later treated to the sight of the soldiers giddily watching the village bombing from “Apocalypse Now” and, later, preparing to screen a video of “The Deer Hunter.”
They've grown up with VCRs and have watched Full Metal Jacket and The Deer Hunter to prepare for war.
Once the outfit is stationed overseas for Operation Desert Storm, the men eagerly gather around a television to watch a VHS tape of another war-is-hell Vietnam morality tale, “The Deer Hunter.”
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(His images of the oil fields burning in the night, while clearly inspired by Werner Herzog’s stunning 1992 documentary “Lessons of Darkness,” have a terrifying and hallucinatory beauty to them.)
Take a look at Werner Herzog’s fascinating docu, “Lessons of Darkness,” about the oil fire fighters in post-Gulf War Kuwait, and you’ll see what a good job “Jarhead” does in its depiction.
Part Full Metal Jacket , part Platoon , part Three Kings , Jarhead -- based on the memoirs of Gulf War veteran Anthony Swofford--examines what happens when men, primed for war, are thwarted from ever seeing any action.
It’s pointless to compare "Jarhead" with the host of late 20th century war genre classics that include "Apocalypse Now," "The Deer Hunter," "Platoon" and the end-all-be-all of Stanley Kubrick’s "Full Metal Jacket."
Jarhead is inferior to David O. Russell's Three Kings and lacks the dramatic firepower of Apocalypse Now and Platoon.
Give me a glossy, pat morality play like "Platoon" over this feckless existentialism any day.
Most modern war movies – from Platoon to Born on the Fourth of July to Saving Private Ryan - have dealt with the mental and physical toll that war takes on soldiers.
The credits are astonishing: “ Double Indemnity ,” “ Ace in the Hole ,” “ Some Like It Hot ,” “The Apartment,” “The Lost Weekend,” “Stalag 17,” “Witness for the Prosecution,” “Sabrina.”
A tale of misplaced ambition, self-deluded dementia, and, in a way, the empty signifiers of the illusory film medium that Wilder loves, the picture is less a noir, however (at least in terms of Double Indemnity, a seminal noir) than it is the closest thing Wilder made to a horror film (in lighting, score, and character dynamic) after The Lost Weekend.
Billy Wilder ("Sunset Boulevard"/"The Seven Year Itch "/"Some Like It Hot") directs this original, intense and grim study of a hopeless alcoholic.
For instance: The Lost Weekend won the top prize at both Cannes and the Academy Awards, to date only one of two films to do so; conversely, The Emperor Waltz received mixed reviews and is today considered one of the pair’s lesser efforts.
Wilder’s scripts are always excellent, from Double Indemnity (1944) and The Lost Weekend (1945) to Some Like it Hot (1959).
Five years later, Wilder would create his masterwork, "Sunset Boulevard," an instant classic that blended melodrama with satire.
Most modern war movies – from Platoon to Born on the Fourth of July to Saving Private Ryan - have dealt with the mental and physical toll that war takes on soldiers.
As movie titles go, Jarhead will always struggle to contend with the romantic sweep of a Sands of Iwo Jima - at least as a Marine Corp recruiting device.
Gyllenhaal does a great job: He's not like Matthew Modine, all smirky irony in "Full Metal Jacket," or Charlie Sheen, all over-educated angst in "Platoon," or John Agar, all innocent patriotism in "Sands of Iwo Jima."
As movie titles go, Jarhead will always struggle to contend with the romantic sweep of a Sands of Iwo Jima - at least as a Marine Corp recruiting device.
Gyllenhaal does a great job: He's not like Matthew Modine, all smirky irony in "Full Metal Jacket," or Charlie Sheen, all over-educated angst in "Platoon," or John Agar, all innocent patriotism in "Sands of Iwo Jima."
The ensemble cast does a fine job making the guys around Swoff realistic individuals; versus the caricature treatment Clint Eastwood gave his recon platoon in “Heartbreak Ridge” (a film I like as a guilty pleasure).
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John Ford, John Huston and Samuel Fuller actually served during World War II, and their war films tend to ring with a certain kind of inner understanding, most notably seen in Fuller's masterful memoir The Big Red One (1980).
And the film's thematic sense that the experience of war is not what these young men anticipated goes back at least as far as "All Quiet on the Western Front" 75 years ago.