Jarhead

I was hoping to see ‘Syriana’ today but it turns out that there are no “selected movie theaters” in Ohio, so I watched ‘Jarhead’ instead. It was much better than I expected, given the way the trailer is cut and the New York Times review. ‘Three Kings’ is the obvious comparison, and it lacks the absurdism of that movie and its emotional detachment from either war or the main characters. ‘Jarhead’ is not as good a movie as ‘Three Kings.’ But it is trying to do different things, and it ends up being a pretty damn good movie.

A few random thoughts. First, its subversiveness is more clumsy and obvious than ‘Three Kings,’ but it is nonetheless devastating. The failed equipment, the charred bodies on the Highway of Death, the way the first Gulf War was oversold, the stupidity of the military commanders, all add up to an indictment of the war, and the connections to what is happening today are made quite clear.

Second, this is a movie that is primarily about the effects of war on American soldiers, and it seems to get the little details just right. The obsession with what the wife or girlfriend (all the soldiers are male) is doing back home. The grinding boredom. The desire to kill just in order to make you feel like it is all worthwhile.

Third, there are some wonderful scenes. One, where the soldiers watch the helicopter assault near the beginning of ‘Apocalypse Now’ and whoop and holler without a trace of the irony of the original movie (and, nicely, later on in the movie a helicopter flies overhead playing The Doors “Break on Through” and a soldier says “that’s music from another war. Why can’t we get our own music” – the shadow of Vietnam is present throughout the movie). Two, when a soldier gets what appears to be a copy of ‘The Deerhunter’ from his wife, watches it with the whole platoon, and it cuts to his wife fucking the neighbor. Three, a horse, covered in oil from burning oil wells, wheezing and probably dying, just wanders through the platoon in the desert at night.

Oh, and Jamie Foxx produces another restrained, powerful performance: his Staff Sargent Sykes is simultaneously able to fully commit himself to what he has to do and yet also see the absurdity of what his men are called upon to do.

At the end of the day the movie cannot bring itself to criticize the grunts, and they are portrayed as working class heroes. There is nothing that could augur an Abu Ghraib. Still, well worth watching.

PS. There was a preview for ‘Munich.’ Trailers often lie, but it looks superb.