“Every war is different. Every war is the same.” So says the voiceover narration in the closing moments of Sam Mendes’ Jarhead. I might add: Every war movie is different. Every war movie is the same. This is Mendes’ Gulf War answer to Apocalypse Now - he announces as much by connecting the two in an early scene showing marines whipped into a frenzy while watching the helicopter attack sequence from Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film. Jarhead is about how the experience of being in the military fundamentally changes an individual. In this case, the focus isn’t about the madness of slaughter in the jungle, but the madness of inaction in the desert.

Jarhead is compelling in the way it presents a new facet of a genre that some would argue was mined out long ago. Yet, as much as the film contains the familiar elements of war movies, the thrust is different. This is about loss, but not the loss of life. Instead, it’s about the dissipation of identity. Those who entered the corps and were sent to Kuwait were disconnected from their previous life and all that went with it: wives/girlfriends, friends, jobs, families… But, instead of accomplishing what they were trained to do, they wait, and Godot is nowhere to be found. Portraying these personality transformations is where Jarhead excels, and the reason why this isn’t just another of the growing number of dramas about the Gulf War.
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Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Brian Geraghty, Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Dennis Haysbert
Director: Sam Mendes
Producers: Lucy Fisher, Sam Mendes, Douglas Wick
Screenplay: William D. Broyles Jr., based on the book by Anthony Swofford
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Music: Thomas Newman
U.S. Distributor: Universal Pictures

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