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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Jarhead

Psi-L is working in hell

22:32 / 24.01.06

So just been to see Jarhead by Sam Mendes, which is based on the memoirs of Anthony Swofford, who served in the first Gulf War.

I enjoyed it, it is a funny film, whilst at the same time managing to highlight the often surreal situations the marines find themselves in, and the pressure that they are forced to operate under...the way that they are programmed like machines to want to kill.

As an anti-war film (which is what it has been dubbed by much of the press as far as I've seen) I thought it was quite subtle really, though definitely worked for me as much as a film criticising the current war in Iraq, as it does the earlier Gulf War, with nods to their faulty equipment, the disrespecful treatment of Iraqis by the marines, and their feelings that the underlying reasons for the war are all to do with oil.

It's certainly not as graphic as some of the more recent war films, and I'm thinking here of Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line, I felt it tended to go more for a slightly surreal depiction of war.

So anyone else seen it, liked it, loathed it? Did it work for you as an anti-war film or not?

I've not read the book, but I think I will now do...not sure how it compares, anyone else consumed both?

09:30 / 25.01.06

I liked it. Not sure if I liked it as an anti-war movie so much, as just a neat movie. I served 2 1/2 years in the U.S.Army and in basic training we were taught to yell things like "Pray for war!!!". And then when we were finally stationed wherever nothing was going on, and as a soldier you kind of wished a war would go down instead of just doing a job that you could probably be doing in the civilian world with a lot more freedom and a lot more money. Funny now, because my old unit was one of the first to hit Iraq and had several casulaties, but my time in the service seems a lifetime ago as do chants of "Pray for war!!" which I now see as disgusting. I think it did a good job of showing the frustration of trained killers (the USMC snipers) who have no release. My unit spent 4 months in Kuwait so some of the scenes made me giggle a little more than the people I saw it with (suited up military on civilian flight, immediate downing of water on landing). The ending seemed kind of abrupt,but overall I thought the movie was good.

13:38 / 25.01.06

>> basic training we were taught to yell things like "Pray for war!!!".

Wow...yikes. Scary stuff. The army does like its brainwashing/conditioning....although to be fair, since war is such an extreme action and combat so intense to the human psyche, I guess some conditioning/preparation is necessary...maybe not praying for war, though.

From the previews I've seen, it looks like the movie is about how sometimes war is just sitting around waiting for something to happen, until soldiers who have never seen combat are suddenly confronted with the harsh reality of actual combat action. I'll have to check out the movie and see how it is...I didn't realize it was Sam "American Beauty" Mendes who directed this.

17:41 / 25.01.06

I saw this a few months ago when it was out in the US, and I was underwhelmed. It's a well made film, but I wasn't really left with anything. I suppose that's the consequence of doing a film about the nothing surrounding war, but other than a few really good moments, the oil explosions and "Fight the Power" at the end, it was one of those movies that's just kind of there. To some extent, it suffers from the fact that so many war movies have been made, you can only exist in relation to what happened in the past, to do just a straight up war movie would seem dated. To some extent that seems to be what it's like with real wars too, every war is seen in relation to what came before, and none can live up to the image of World War II.

Even though it wouldn't be true to the book, I wish the film was about the second Gulf War, because there's a lot more interesting issues surrounding that, and the 'thinly veiled' references in this film weren't as interesting as an outright examination of what's going on there could be.

14:57 / 26.09.06

I finally saw this last night- and while its a good movie, it certainly seems to owe a lot in structure to the infinitely superior 'Full Metal Jacket' - whether meant as an ironic post modern nod at the movie (the troops watch Apocalypse Now and Deer Hunter and when a helicopter plays the doors someone shouts at it "that's a Vietnam song" so post modern movie awareness seems to be a theme) or a blatant rip off- The chants of "this is my rifle, there are many like it but this one is mine" brings us back to Private Pile (that was his name wasn't it?) in FMJ.

The movie's structure is very similar: basic training followed by deployment- the nothingness and boredom- the interviews with TV crews- Its a good film but it doesn't really add a great deal to the themes explored in FMJ.

I liked the film - its got good performances and i liked the gentle political pointers that are raised throughout the film ("The wars over- this is the last time we're coming to this country...") But I couldn't help but feel i've seen similar movies- with better resolve.

21:09 / 06.09.08

Good performance by Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx but that was about it for me. The supporting characters didn't have enough character and as mentioned above, too much direct nicking from FMJ. You can see that it was a relatively low budget film and for me there was no sense of a wider situation. For a film set partly in the desert it felt very small.

It seemed like they wanted to do an anti war film but were too scared to actually criticise anybody directly (politicians etc) and just went for the "war is boring and ridiculous" angle as though it is a natural disaster rather than a decision by someone, somewhere to order the killing of other people.

So in the end, meh.

20:56 / 08.10.08

vastly overrated,, it skimmed over an important event without taking the opportunity to delve into and blast the atrocities commited against the conscript army, `anti-war` not anti enough