Movies

Jarhead Review

I recently saw the movie Jarhead on DVD. While I thought that the graphics were very well done, the movie in its entirety is completely pointless. The little action it contained ranged from typically tired war movie cliches to witty to pethetic and sad.

One of the best things about this movie is how the burning oil fields in Iraq were prtrayed. I found the plumes of fire and the thick black smoke as well as the raining oil and the mess it made striking. Also, i think the scene where they were in training and the dumbass soldier didn't stay down and was shot was well done. Cudos also to the A-10 Thunderbold and the carpet bombings (the tower and the friendly convoy). Lastly the burned corpeses that Swaff's section came to were well done (no pun intended) and depicted the horrors of war well.

There seems to be a repeating trend that has coped itself into the war movie genre fromm the teen movie genre. As the teen movies tend to have a "token black guy" which has been poked fun at with movies like "Not another teen Movie", the war genre has 3 "tokens" emerging: the token dumbass ignoramus, and the token nervous wreck guy and the token psychopathic drill instructor. I don't get offended by the constant stream of four letter words coming from the mouths of the various DIs we've seen throughout the war movie history, and i even found it funny at one time. "Are you a faggot, Gomer Pyle? Sir, no sir! Bullshit! I bet you would fuck a guy in the ass and not have the goddamn decency to give 'im a reach around!" However, it's been done so many times since then it's gotten old. I liked the part where he gets kind of dilusional and sees things differently before snapping back to reality, as well as the part when the CO went to take a shit when Swaff was burning the barrels. That was funny. "I left you a present. Not too hard, not too soft." The many parts about jerking off and about the cheating wives/girlfriends is sad and although real, i doubt it would happen to an entire platoon at once.

The worst thing about this movie is that it's a war movie without any war. Maybe the point was to be anti-climactic but it failed badly and left the viewer wondering "then what was the last 2 hours about? what a useless waste of time!" at least it did for me. The ending attempted weakly to say that once you become a jarhead (USMC) your views will be jaded for the rest of your life, even if you didn't fight. All it did was make the movie a waste of time.

In the end, i didn't like the movie overall, and i don't recomend people buy it but if u really want to see it to see what it's all about then borrow it from a buddy, cuz it's not worth renting.