CORPORATE LINE: Jake Gyllenhaal (The Day After Tomorrow, Moonlight Mile), Jamie Foxx (Ray, Collateral) and Peter Sarsgaard (Kinsey, Boys Don’t Cry) star in Universal Pictures’ Jarhead, the adaptation of Marine Anthony Swofford’s bracing memoir that took readers into his disorienting firsthand experience in the Gulf War. Jarhead is directed by Academy Award® winner Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition) and the producers are Oscar® winner Doug Wick (Gladiator) and Lucy Fisher (upcoming Memoirs of a Geisha), partners in Red Wagon Entertainment. The screenplay is by William Broyles, Jr. (Cast Away, Apollo 13).
Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows “Swoff” (Gyllenhaal), a third-generation enlistee, from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, sporting a sniper’s rifle and a hundred-pound ruck on his back through Middle East deserts with no cover from intolerable heat or from Iraqi soldiers, always potentially just over the next horizon. Swoff and his fellow Marines sustain themselves with sardonic humanity and wicked comedy on blazing desert fields in a country they don’t understand against an enemy they can’t see for a cause they don’t fully fathom.
Foxx portrays Sergeant Sykes, a Marine lifer who heads up Swofford’s scout/sniper platoon, while Sarsgaard is Swoff’s friend and mentor, Troy, a die-hard member of STA-their elite Marine Unit.
An irreverent and true account of a war that was antiseptically packaged a decade ago, Jarhead is laced with dark wit, honest inquisition and episodes that are at once surreal and poignant, tragic and absurd.
THE FILM: Based on the fantastic book, Jarhead does a wonderful job making us care about the characters. Director Sam Mendes doesn’t force Swoff or Sykes on the viewer. Jake Gyllenhaal does a fantastic job in the primary role. It’s not easy to convince the viewer to fall in love with a character but Gyllenhaal keeps us interested from beginning to end.
One problem with the war genre is that each succeeding war movie carries leftovers from films past. The difference with Jarhead is not the insanity of war but of sitting around burning time. Even though the characters are bored to tears the viewer isn’t. Without the wonderful character Jarhead would have been unbearable.
The cinematography is brilliant. The barren landscape looks wonderful and the shots at night come alive. It almost seems impossible to make a barren desert come alive and yet Jarhead does all of that.
FRANKLY: The way Jarhead tackles war feels fresh even while many of the movie’s elements are recycled. Jake Gyllenhall is certain to create Oscar buzz.
+ Charlie Craine
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