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Sam Mendes' adaptation of the Anthony Swofford book "Jarhead" is unique among military movies.
Perhaps more than any recent military adventure, Mendes' work penetrates the tight, closed fraternity of the U.S. Marine Corps and also depicts the frustrations and triumphs of the modern soldier.
This is not a shoot-em up action thriller, but more documentary look at the military experience during the first Gulf war. The adversaries are boredom, infidelity and challenges of integrating vastly different backgrounds and intellects into a co-hesive unit.
The movie celebrates the closeness only formed in military seclusion and the dark disappointments endured.
This movie works on you like a delayed action drug. Hollywood effects and embellishments aside, it is starkly accurate- especially in its protrayal of the intense boredem and comedic repetition and absurd little oddities of military life. In these depictions, it is spot-on (the sandbag pyramid).
Another master-stroke is the depiction of the characters. It would seem that every platoon from the Army to the Marines has the same characters: The red neck weirdo, the college boy, the perenial fuck-up, the psycho, the tough guy and the brain... Jarhead does a perfect job of capturing these characters.
There are so many little gems in this movie it takes a lot to digest. There are also some frighteningly real moments that will envoke unpleasant memories for anyone in the military.
Perhaps the greatest single acheivement here is that it doesn't show much combat- but focuses more on the day-to-day grind of the military experience.
This is a beautiful and sweeping movie, but sobering and terrifying too. There are masterful depictions and edits and camera work. The technical accuracy is excellent too. For many Americans, this will be the first look into the modern military experience on the silver screen, and a worthy one it is.
Five stars for an instant classic, Jarhead. *****.
Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com
Anyone else find "the military" really boring?
Thank God I grew out of the gun phase when I was about 11.
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You call yourself a Christian, I call you hypocrite. You call yourself a patriot well, I think you're full of s**t
NeoCon by the Rolling Stones
It was years of boredom punctuated by seconds of abject terror.
Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com
Thank you Tom. I will proably check it out this weekend.
customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.
Yes the military can be soul killing boring at times.
I am not getting what you are trying to say. There is a lot of sarcasm in what you wrote and it is hard to put your two statements together. So what exactly is on your mind?
customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.
"It would seem that every platoon from the Army to the Marines has the same characters: The red neck weirdo, the college boy, the perenial fuck-up, the psycho, the tough guy and the brain"
Which one were you?
I became the brain. I was honor graduate.
Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com
Hey Tibbs,
Hmmm. Strange you should interpret my comments that way. None of them are meant to be sarcastic.
I actually really enjoyed the movie- in that odd sort of way. It was a downer though too.
Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com
I see you more as the toruted young officer. Disciplined and tough. Always making sure his guys where good to go and willing too lead them to hell but late at night you would watch them sleep and have a horrible misgivings about what you where doing. You had learned to love and protect your men and have sharpened them into a deadly fighting unit yet you hated the fact that you would be the one who led them into battle but you looked past your caring and did you duty with grave affects on yourself.
customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.
Tom, Tibbs was replying to Haondotri.
Were you the only one in your unit with shaved legs?
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Wow, you're giving me a lot more credit than I am (was) due.
Basically, I was the only guy in our platoon who had read a book without pictures.
And then they found out I could read and was reasonably smart and the fun really began.
Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com
What's with this "gun phase at 11" stuff? And who is that guy?
T.
Wow you could read ! In the suck it was only adult picture books.No time to read if the e-club was open. I might have mised a fight if I spent any time on the shiter reading.
Dirt
Slowtwitch bitchist place on planet earth
First time I went on a deployment on a Navy ship, you had to contribute to the "smut locker". Mandatory donation of at least 2 adult mags or 1 super-8 film (hey, it was '78 and Beta or VHS weren't that cheap :-)
T.
you had super 8 wow !! you young guy's get all the good stuff.
Dirt
Slowtwitch bitchist place on planet earth
I thought it was a terrible movie. It was a boring war, so the subject itself wasn't interesting. Then it was so piecemeal. They were in basic for 5 minutes, then all of a sudden they were here, then here, then here, then by some oil wells. No one got to shoot and freaked out and then it ended. It really made no point, which is fine. I guess they tried to tie in a Vietnam vet at the end, who really went through the shit, to some guys who coudn't even handle not going through anything. Was that the point?
"It really made no point, which is fine."
I think that was the point.
Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com
Nothing like running to the tarmac then waiting 16 hours. Good times.
customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.
We were one of the first units on the ground there, and after we dug our fighting holes, we started to refer to ourselves as "speed bumps in the desert". All we had were our light arms and some crew-served weapons, to start, plus some air cover from the Saudis (doubtful, at best) and some scattered Navy and Air Force assets.
Saddam could've rolled us up like bug squat.
T.
My ass. You could have taken them with a pen knife and roll of duck tape.
customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.
Not me. That yellow stripe that runs down my backside would've taken control, and there would've been a Road-Runner dust cloud behind me as I "egressed the area" ;-)
It's amazing. We were all really, really worked up about the T-72 and T-80 tanks that "So-damn Insane" had, and I know that there was a squad of Marine reserve M60 tanks and their crews that kicked the living hell out of a company of Republican Guard main battle tanks. Good old "Boo-boo Company". God loves the Marine Corps, for sure.
T.
Yeah, I was there a little later (we landed in the rain on Jan 1) and immediately headed to the Kuwait border and dug in. We moved our position every couple of days and waited for the ground war to start. We were all fired up and nowhere to let it out - crazy. Finally when the ground war started we took buses to the front line (as part of task force Ripper) which was hilarious. Once we got there we off-loaded into 5-tons and rode those the rest of the time picking up the thousands of Iraqi surrenderers.
Eventually we couldn't handle the volume of them and just pointed to the rear as we drove by telling them to keep walking and surrender to the Marines behind us. We faced very little resistance, and those that did, didn't for very long. We were luck enough to make it through the airport, burning oil fields where the smoke was so black it was midnight at noon, and finally the outskirts of Kuwait city. They eventually kicked us out of the city because we were shooting the wrong guys - hard to tell the difference between the coalition forces and the Iraqi soldiers. We took very few casualties the entire time - mostly from friendly fire.
Less than a week after it started it was over. I spent the next 4 months playing volleyball, washing anything motorized to decontaminate before shipping it home (got to drive anything the Marine Corps owned that moved across the ground, which was friggin cool), and doing PT waiting for my plane ride home.
Oh yes.
Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com