Jarhead - 5.0

Jarhead is a movie about the first Iraq war from American Beauty director, Sam Mendes. Honestly, the movie didn't elicit a lot of strong emotions from me. The opening section of the film was a prototypical Full Metal Jacket-wannabe boot-camp montage that was fairly amusing but, in the end, unremarkable. The second half of the movie was set in Middle East, and was just as exciting as the actual war ... Not very. The acting was fine. Gyllenhaal didn't annoy me, which is more than I can usually say; Jamie Foxx was pretty good, but not Ray good and Chris Cooper, who I always like, had a nice little supporting role as a general. My favorite part of the movie were some very cool visuals from the burning oil fields. With pillars of flame and black rain falling from the sky, it was really a pretty eerie scene. I just wish the movie could've captured more of those moments that made the war unique instead of focusing all of the normal stupid dicking around shown in so many movies about life as a soldier.

I've read complaints about a lack of subtlety in American Beauty (I myself HATED the scene with the bag video), and Jarhead has a ham-fisted moment or two also. The most egregious blunder came towards the end of the movie when the soldiers are celebrating victory around a campfire in the desert and one says to another, "Thank God this is over. We'll never have to come back here again." Ugh, that line alone drops it from a 6.0 (ok) to 5.0 (so-so). In general, I feel like I am damning with faint praise here, but faint praise is exactly what Jarhead deserves. It was technically adequate, but the movie isn't saying anything new, so really, why bother?