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List Price: $39.98 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 19603
Released: March 7, 2006 |
| Our Price: $33.60 |
| Used Price: $12.00 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx and Jake Gyllenhaal star in this critically acclaimed, brilliantly unconventional war story from Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes.
Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows Swoff (Gyllenhaal) from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, where he sports a sniper rifle through Middle East deserts that provide no cover from the heat or Iraqi soldiers. 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 grasp.
Description of Jarhead (Two-Disc Collector's Edition):
Based on Anthony Swofford’s excellent memoir about his experiences as a Marine Sniper in Gulf War I, Jarhead is a war movie in which the waiting is a far greater factor upon the characters than the war itself, and the build up to combat is more drama than what combat is depicted. To some viewers hoping for typical movie action, this will seem like a cruel joke. But it’s not. It’s just the story as it was written, and if you liked the book, you will probably like the movie. If you didn’t, then the movie won’t change your mind.
The movie follows the trajectory of Swofford (played with thoughtful intensity by Jake Gyllenhaal) from wayward Marine recruit (he joined because he "got lost on the way to college") to skilled Marine sniper, and on into the desert in preparation for the attack on Iraq. No-nonsense, Marine-for-life Staff Sgt. Sykes (Jamie Foxx), the man who recruited Swofford and his spotter Troy (Peter Sarsgaard) into the sniper team, leads them in training, and in waiting where their lives are dominated by endless tension, pointless exercises in absurdity (like playing football in the scorching heat of the desert in their gas masks so it will look better for the media’s TV cameras), more training, and constant anticipation of the moment to come when they’ll finally get to kill. When the war does come, it moves too fast for Swofford’s sniper team, and the one chance they get at a kill--to do the one thing they’ve trained so hard and waited so long for--eludes them, leaving them to wonder what was the point of all they had endured.
As directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty), the movie remains very loyal to the language and vision of the book, but it doesn’t entirely work as the film needs something more than a literal translation to bring out its full potential. Mendes’s stark and, at times, apocalyptic visuals add a lot and strike the right tone: wide shots of inky-black oil raining down on the vast, empty desert from flaming oil wells contrasted with close-ups of crude-soaked faces struggling through the mire vividly bring to life the meaning of the tagline "welcome to the suck." But much of the second half of the movie will probably leave some viewers feeling disappointed in the cinematic experience, while others might appreciate its microcosmic depiction of modern chaos and aimlessness. Jarhead is one of those examples where the book is better than the movie, but not for lack of trying. --Dan Vancini
Jarhead (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) Reviews:
Every Man Fights His Own War 
2008-11-25 - This movie is hugely underrated, and often poorly misrepresented. At least it appears so from a lot of these reviews.
Perhaps as others have said, it was and still is marketed incorrectly, as some believe the absence of "War-like Violence" leaves much to be desired.
But define war?? At least in its true, non text book sense and this movie will speak volumes.
It's an incredibly intelligent, poignant and heartbreakingly honest film, driven by 'the wait' for an enemy that never emerged.
Perhaps our ignorance for such a film proves our ignorance towards the true mechanisms and often extreme waste that war is.
Mission to kill?
We seem to forget the stories of those who did nothing but kill time in the desert.
As the film concludes; "He will always remain, a jarhead. And all the jarheads, killing and dying, they will always be me...
We are still in the desert"
5 stars...
If you're intelligent enough to understand it, you'll never forget it
Interesting Movie 
2008-10-19 - Too bad HD-DVD is dead, but if you still own a player, this is a great movie for the price. I think those of us who are soldiers and have been to Iraq can understand this movie a little better than those who haven't. Some of the scences can be too close to home and somewhat overbearing for non-military viewers, but helps to remind us how much of a sacrifice we made in both wars. The picture quality and sound delivers, though this more of an enhanced DVD than a true HD movie.
Really wants to be Apocalypse Now... 
2008-10-14 - If you want a war move that probes the depths of madness and incorporates surerealism while exploring the lives of soldiers trapped in a pointless microcosm of a wider war, you have two options. Get a pretty lame and boring variation on this theme in Jarhead, or get Apocalypse Now. The later is the infinitely better choice.
Good Movie for a Boring Day
2008-08-03 - This isn't the most captivating movie in the world, but it does have humor in it with a serious underlying message. It's a good movie to watch when you're tired, but not so good for real brain stimulation.
Not at all what I expected 
2008-07-27 - I rented this one last night, expecting a typical war story. What I got was something else entirely. This is the movie adaptation of the autobiographical book of the same name by Anthony Swofford about his experiences in the Marines during the first Gulf War. As a former military guy myself from that era, I was initially drawn into the story because I could relate to Swofford's introduction into military life at boot camp. It was a scene familiar to anyone with armed forces experience. Unfortunately, the movie went downhill from there.
As the story traces Swofford's short military career through his garrison time and into Desert Shield, there remains an aura of credibility, although frankly some of the behavior depicted by the servicemen began to stretch the limits of what was believable based on what I knew of military life. As Desert Shield drags on for months, the focus shifts to the emotional and psychological toll of wartime inactivity, which admittedly is more pronounced among sex-starved young men who know nothing but loneliness and boredom. Even so, these scenes become exaggerated and even caricatured by the onset of the Desert Storm phase.
Finally, the theme moves on to the futility and senselessness of war from the perspective of the average grunt on the ground. Again, there was some familiarity here for one who had lived through eight years of often nonsensical and contradictory military culture. However, some of the Marines' responses simply didn't jive with the reality of their circumstances, or reflect fairly on the immense professionalism that characterizes the modern U.S. military, both now and during the early 90s when this story takes place.
Oddly enough, for a "war movie" this had almost no violence in it whatsoever. It is much more of a character study and a psychological inquiry into the nature of young men trained to fight and kill. It renders an indictment of high-level military leadership which, while true, is also one-sided. In short, this story offers up heavy doses of both reality and exaggeration, and it is up to the viewer to try to sort out which is which. For people with military experience that shouldn't be too hard, but others will likely walk away with a distorted view of our armed forces.
