Jarhead: A War Movie for People Who Don't Like War Movies

Jarhead. n. Slang. A U.S. Marine. Also refers to a marine's high and tight hair cut.






Such is the title of the new film by American Beauty director Sam Mendes; it's a war movie for people who don't like war movies.  Based on an auto-biography by former Marine Anthony Swofford, Jarhead follows the training and deployment of an elite sniper group to Iraq before and during the first Gulf War.  It chronicles not the battles and explosions of war, but the soldier's state of mind, and the boredom of waiting for combat.






After a disappointing follow up to 1999's Oscar winning American Beauty, the beautiful but empty Road to Perdition, Jarhead is a return to Mendes' signature style: a character driven drama, mixed with some quirky humor, rock-and-roll montages and idyllic cinematography.  Using the poignant and humorous observations from Swofford's book, Mendes gets inside the experience of being a soldier - the patriotism, the fear, the boredom and the let down. 






Though not quite as emotionally jarring as American Beauty, Jarhead is equally visually haunting, and celebrates the same dark humor.  Roger Deakins, cinematographer on such films as The Shawshank Redemption and A Beautiful Mind, frames the arid desserts of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait in sharp contrasts - vast space dotted with lone figures, bright fires set against the blackest night, white sand peeking up from under charred soot.   In the later segments, hulking figures stand in sharp relief against an inky black sky as the oil fires bloom behind them, and it is pure visual poetry, awe-inspiring, and jarringly beautiful for a thing as ugly as war.

Jarhead follows the training and deployment of an elite sniper group to Iraq before and during the first Gulf War.

Credit: Universal Studios

Copyright: Universal Studios