Jarhead

 2.5/4

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Lucas Black, Evan Jones

Rated R for Pervasive Language, Some Violent Images and Strong Sexual Content

I suppose it takes a certain type of person to survive in a world where being branded with your job is considered an honor, trash talking is part of normal conversation and profanity flows as freely as water.  I'm not sure that Swoff is the kind of guy who fits in to this world, but then again, neither does he.  He learns to survive, at least.  More power to him.

Anthony Swofford (Gyllenhaal) ended up in the Marine Corps and is not quite sure how he got there.  "I got lost on my way to college," is his answer when interrogated by a drill instructor.  Truth is, Swoff never figures out how anything really happens to him.  He gets into sniper school, where he meets his spotter and best friend, Troy (Sarsgaard).  Before they know it, they are shipped of to Iraq to fight in Operation Desert Storm.  Welcome to the Suck.

A movie like "Jarhead" is easy to conceive of but hard to make well.  Rather than plot or character, the film is about pent-up emotion.  Stress, sure.  But also rage and boredom.  Add in ennui and stupidity too.  In that potent mix of emotions and feelings, we get one of the most peculiar war films I've ever seen.

The problem is that I didn't really feel any of these emotions.  There is a surprising lack of tension in the film.  Their emotions never became mine.  Director Sam Mendes approaches the film as a neutral observer.  He views this story through the lens of an anthropologist, curious as to why these men, unable to do the one thing they have trained for months and years to do, act like hooligans.  That's the wrong approach, I think.  It makes it harder to identify with them.  He shows what they do, but doesn't explore it.

Few actors working today are more reliable than Jake Gyllenhaal.  Even in genuinely awful films like "Demolition" (a film I am sure he would like to forget about), he never coasts through on his charm and charisma.  Gyllenhaal does what he can, but he's not given much to work with.  The writing just isn't there.  He has to play a flat character, but the writing makes him feel static.  Swoff is a blank slate, and it's hard to identify with him.  Peter Sarsgaard (and Gyllenhaal's current brother-in-law) is miscast.  Sarsgaard is as underrated as they come (he deserved, but did not get, an Oscar nomination for "Shattered Glass"), but his low-key acting style lacks the presence needed to play a soldier.  No matter how hard he tries, I just did not buy him as a jarhead.  Evan Jones and Lucas Black are much better as their crude and out-of-control comrades.  The only actor who truly works is Jamie Foxx as the tough-as-nails Staff Sgt. Sykes.  He steals every scene he is in (something Foxx has always been able to do) as the man who loves being a marine.  Chris Cooper and Dennis Haysbert appear in a few scenes.  Possibly because no movie like this would feel complete without them.

So "Jarhead" doesn't quite work.  But at the same time, it takes chances.  Mendes doesn't reshape the film into a traditional narrative that would betray what the film is trying to show.  It doesn't highlight the irony of giving up so much only to not be able to do what you're trained to do.  What it does do is illustrate the particular insanity that results from being a pawn in your own life and having nothing to show for it.  Of being trapped between the gun ho cliches you're led to believe and the reality of pointlessness you find yourself in.  And how the only people who understand are the people who went through it with you.