In retrospect, JARHEAD isn't exactly the extraordinary masterpiece I thought it was last year. It took the top spot on my "Best of 2005" last fall for a while, but it really isn't the film I thought it was after another trip on DVD. That being said, a film can be damn good without being a masterpiece. JARHEAD is.
There are two ways to look at JARHEAD in my mind. On one hand, it is a spectacularly realistic look through American soldiers' eyes in the Iraq/Kuwait conflict in which boredom was the real enemy. On the other hand it is a look at how one a man becomes a soldier, he is a soldier forever. "A man fires a rifle for many years. and he goes to war. And afterwards he comes home, and he sees that whatever else he may do with his life - build a house, love a woman, change his son's diaper - he will always remain a jarhead. And all the jarheads killing and dying, they will always be me. We are still in the desert."
The film opens with a sequence reminiscent of FULL METAL JACKET, in which PFC Anthony Swafford, played intensely by Jake Gyllenhaal, fulfills his life duty by joining the Marines in 1990. Young, dumb, and ideal, Swafford begins to realize that his time in the Corps may not turn out exactly what he thought it would be like. His father served before him in Vietnam, but only talked about his experience once. Maybe this aura and level of secrecy made him hunger to be a soldier even more, the audience never finds out. What Swafford finds out is that he will not be charging into battles with guns blazing. He will snipe, waiting silently without moving, for days, praying that no one will see him and that he will be able to take a single shot.
His partner is PFC Troy, an inward, quiet, troubled young man. Peter Sarsgaard plays him, offering the film's best performance. He is a man who has chosen the Marines because he has nowhere else no go; a no-nonsense man who hopes that he will be in the Corps the rest of his life, even though he doesn't want to be, or think that he will be there. His frustration is affecting and visible as he begins to emotionally break down towards the climax of the film. This could be his only tour of duty. How can he live it without even firing his rifle?
While these two characters are fleshed out and authentic, the supporting cast is really a bunch of clichés. Jamie Foxx is solid as the drill sergeant who believes his job is 'the best in the world and really brings some relish to the role, but the rest of the supporting chaaracters are re-hashes of older, better ones: the hick, the dork, the horn dog, etc. etc.
Towards the end of the film, especially in its final sequence, there is an abandonement of the realistic account of the soldiers' war in order for a 'message' to be instilled. I don't know whether this was written in Swafford's memoir, which the film is adapted from, but the ending is preachy, shoving it in the face that a man who fights in a war will always be a soldier, no matter what he does. Sprinkled throughout the film are conjectures that argue that maybe a soldier's experience will always stay with him and even shape who he becomes, but the ending shoves it down the audience's throat.
That being said, JARHEAD is a very, very good film. A near-masterpiece, even. It is certainly entertaining, and the middle passages are involving even though little goes on in the lives of the soldiers. I haven't been on a battlefield myself, but this seemed to be an accurate portrayal of how fighting, or a lack of fighting, can mess a man's mind up. It is a transcendent film for much of its running time, and I can still almost feel the heat and the lack of women or entertainment in my mind.
A-
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