Film Review: Jarhead (2005) C

Date Viewed: 5/31/06
Venue: DVD

Sometimes I see a film that’s based on a novel and say, “gee, the movie was just okay, but now I really want to read the book.” The Sam Mendes (American Beauty) directed Jarhead makes me say just that. Based on the autographical tome of the same name, Jarhead follows the exploits of marine private (‘Jarhead’ is slang for marine) Swafford (Jake Gyllenhal) from boot camp through Desert Storm.

Highly existential in nature (Swafford carries around a worn copy of Camus’ The Stranger, for goodnessakes), the story operates as sort of a tone poem with Swafford is an atypical main character, warm and thoughtful one minute, immature and mentally unstable the next. There is much reflection on the strangeness of the Desert Storm conflict; months spent training in the desert, hardly any shots fired, the hellish visage of oil fires (which really are quite well done, kudos to the FX team). The odd monotony and isolation of it nearly drives Swafford and his fellow Marines mad.

There’s a lot of interesting cultural references and reflexivity throughout the film. The Marines watch Apocalypse Now and cheer lustily during the Flight of the Valkryes scene. A chopper flies over men in Iraq playing an old song by The Doors as Swafford remarks “that’s Vietnam music! We need our own music!” And there is quite an impressive about of period (1989-1990) music in the film. There’s even a reference to the old Nintendo game Metroid that is thematically right on the money. I mean, how cool is that!? An existential NES reference!

The problem with Jarhead is that despite heady aspirations, the piece has a ‘been there, done that’ feel to it. We’ve seen men go mad from war plenty of times before in other films (even Swafford and the other Marines of Jarhead, children of the seventies and eighties, have seen it countless times over on film and TV) We’ve also seen the oblique strangeness of war in other films. The films supporting characters (even Jamie Foxx, who’s quite good as Swafford’s Staff Sgt.) are well played, but can’t offer anything new to these near-stereotypes. And Swafford, a truly existential character, is neither likable nor deplorable, he simply is.

I admire Jarhead for what it tries to accomplish. But for an existential film to work, there’s has to be some originality with story, setting, or supporting cast. There must be something to draw the viewer in and hold interest because an existential main character is by definition incapable of engaging the audience in the manner of a traditional protagonist. And that’s ultimately where Jarhead the film fails. I have a strong feeling, however, that Jarhead the book manages to overcome this obstacle.