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Jarhead Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: R (for pervasive language, some violent imagery and strong sexual content) Genre: Drama, War Theater release: November 04, 2005 by Paramount Directed by: Sam Mendes Runtime: 2 hours 2 minutes Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal (Anthony "Swoff" Swofford), Jamie Foxx (Sgt. Siek), Peter Sarsgaard (Troy), Chris Cooper (Lieutenant Colonel Kazinski) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

In a Kuwaiti desert lit only by burning oil fields, Jarhead's main character runs into the unexpected. With oil raining down on him, U.S. marine Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) finds a tame horse walking only feet away. The horse, like everything else, is coated in oil. Its breathing is heavy. The animal seems burdened by the weight of its new slick coat. With pity, Swofford places his hand on the horse and mutters, "You're covered in this war."

This quote adequately describes everyone in Jarhead, a brutally realistic film about soldiers saturated in war. It sticks to them and seeps into every crevice of their lives. They wear it. They breathe it. They try to understand it. But, like that horse, it can't ever be washed off. It can't be ignored. In fact, war will never leave these soldiers. War becomes who they are.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Anthony Swofford, a U.S. Marine preparing for Operation Desert Storm

Directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty, The Road to Perdition), Jarhead is based on the 2003 book by ex-marine Anthony Swofford. The movie follows Swofford as he enlists in the Marines because, his character says, "I got lost on my way to college." After basic training, Swofford becomes a scout sniper and is sent to Saudi Arabia as part of Operation Desert Shield. Separated from his beloved girlfriend, Kristina, Swofford and fellow soldiers place their attention on preparing for war—looking forward to warfare. And this is where the film stays for most of its runtime: with the soldiers' six-month wait for a war to start. They hydrate. They clean their rifles. They miss their girlfriends and wives. They exercise. They hydrate themselves more.

In all actuality, Jarhead—entitled for the nickname given to empty-headed Marine recruits—is not a war movie. This is not John Wayne. The day isn't saved. And there's no political discussion about whether the U.S. should be in a war with Iraq, or in any war at all. Instead, the film pointedly moves past those issues and focuses on the reality that in any war, there are people who wage it. For good or bad, this is their job. This is what they do. And like in Mendes's American Beauty and Road to Perdition, the story unpacks what that choice and career means. What do soldiers experience mentally? What is it like to war for a living? How does it color you for life?

This sometimes Full Metal Jacket-like thematic focus allows Jarhead to make war—and emotional turmoil—feel tangible and all too real. The film's realism comes in a far different way than the war realism of Saving Private Ryan. Whereas that film's realism came from putting viewers in strikingly vivid battle scenes to show what soldiers experience, Jarhead's realism comes from showing how soldiers feel. There's very little combat shown in the film. Instead, most of the battles are mental. When combat is shown, the film looks at it in an almost mundane, blue-collar way. In the only real combat sequence, Swofford's big heroic duty isn't to save civilians or take out an enemy tower, but to get some more batteries. These are the things that make war tick.

Jamie Foxx as Staff Sergeant Sykes, here with Swofford on Christmas Day

But for Gulf War veterans like Swofford, there wasn't much war to tick by. After all, their 175-day wait in the desert led to a 4-day war in which many of these Marines didn't even fire their weapons. The filmmakers take this opportunity to make Jarhead a search for meaning and existence. What is a soldier who doesn't get to soldier? How does someone define himself or herself when removed from everything they knew? This track of discovery leads Mendes to show not just the ugliness of war, but also the ugliness of man.

Gyllenhaal plays Swofford much like he portrayed Donnie Darko's title character—with a sly, tongue-in-cheek view of the world but with a big internal void to fill. These characters are on Catcher in the Rye-like searches for sanity, meaning and purpose. They are filled with emptiness. As the film begins, Swofford doesn't have much connection with his family. He has no career direction or passion. Instead, his life seems to pretty much revolve around his girlfriend and having sex with his girlfriend. We don't ever really know why Swofford chose the Marines. It could be that his Dad was a Marine, but it also seems to be that this was a direction where he had none.

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