Review of Jarhead (2005) by Andrewk. — 07 Nov 2005

Boring. This movie has such a lack of a plot. Its one of those films where they try to pull off showing you just a bunch of stuff that happens, without any clear storyline to carry it along. Obviously, when it comes to real life, we don't have perfect little conclusions to different parts of our lives, but I think that that's a good reason not to turn some true stories into movies.

I don't know about the actual book, because it might have had a much more clear plot. Or not a plot, really, but at least more of a sense of closure. A lot of people on here have been railing at the REAL critics for saying not enough happened during the film, and mistaking this to mean that the critics were expecting it to be an "action" film.

Honestly, I don't really care for action films. And if I thought that that was all this movie was going to be, I might not have gone to see it (though I do like war films, as long as they have some kind of meaning; this film had neither action OR meaning).

On the bright side, many of the actors did a tremendous job with a less than brilliant script. Its not to say that the movie isn't entertaining at times, but it just leaves you feeling empty at the end, and unsure of what you're supposed to take away from it.

Yes, there is the argument that the whole idea is that a lot of these guys didn't actually get to do ANYthing in the Gulf War, but that's no excuse for a lack of a real story. There are a lot of loose threads that could have been made into something more to help better translate the feelings these soldiers felt about not really doing much.

Every time an occasion like this comes up, it doesn't lead anywhere. David Denby, of The New Yorker, noted that the characters are mysteries. There is obviously something bothering each of them, but we never get to find out exactly what.

The end of the film is extremely anticlimactic. The film didn't have a political statement to make, nor did it need to. When one soldier starts to bring up politics, another chastises him saying, "F*** politics.

We're here now." I took this line to be like an aside from the writer, or maybe even Sam Mendes, as if to say, "That's not what this movie is about. This movie is about the soldiers.