Can't We Get Our Own Fucking Music? Jarhead

Jarhead (2005, directed by Sam Mendes) is a movie about homoeroticism and boredom in the desert.

From Wikipedia: "In an interview with the UK film magazine, Empire, Mendes stated he thought Jarhead would be his most misunderstood film."

It both is and is not a war movie. It's a pastiche of references to war movies, but it's fundamentally about new wars not being anything like old wars, and maybe not being anything like war at all. This makes it an anti-"war movie" movie.

It starts off like Full Metal Jacket. Ornery drill sergeants and micro-fascism. They train, haze, look at porn, and Jake Gyllenhaal reads Camus on the toilet. Then they fly to Kuwait hopped up on adrenaline and Wagner. But when it appears they got there a bit too early, they sit around guarding oil fields in the desert until Congress can prep the battlefield. Picture Three Kings if there was never any gold heist, just guys sitting around on ammunition crates. This is when Mendes flips the switch on us.

Remember how American Beauty is actually about American misery? Well Jarhead is a war movie that's actually about NOT being at war. The desert scenes more accurately resemble There Will be Blood than Black Hawk Down, and I'm sure this pissed off more than a few viewers. That's the point. The marines are pissed off too. They came to do something and we came to watch them do it. But no one is getting what they signed up for.

There's a scene where Peter Saarsgard, who is very good in this movie, explains how the wars aren't fought at 100 yards or even 1,000 yards (these guys are snipers) anymore. Air strikes are called in from miles away and the job is done before you even get there. This is a recurring theme throughout the movie. The underlying statement is that every war is different. The counter-insurgency/Battle of Algiers/hearts and minds tactics that are happening in Iraq and Afghanistan now might mean the days of Jarhead-style war are as over as the days of trench warfare. And that would suit this movie just fine. Jarhead fits well right in the middle of this shifting spectrum. It's about ennui and confusion and the place of ordinary humans in automated situations.

When a helicopter passes overhead blaring The Doors' Break on Through, Gyllenhaal's character sums it up perfectly, "That's Vietnam music. Can't we get our own fucking music?"

Netflix rating: 3 stars
RIYL: Three Kings, Gunner Palace, Gerry
Youtube: This trailer is exactly why the movie wasn't better received. It makes it look action-packed.