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'Jarhead' aspires to, but never quite achieves, greatness
by Bob Longino

Great war films are big, bold, ambitious, unsettling, rousing and, certainly, frightening. "Jarhead," a rollicking, head-spinning, often enticing jaunt into the first oily, scorched-earth Gulf War, aches to be those things. It seeks to yell like Gunnery Sgt. Hartman in "Full Metal Jacket" and go a little mental like Capt. Yossarian in "Catch-22." It wants the look, feel and effect of "Saving Private Ryan," "Apocalypse Now" and "The Thin Red Line." But while "Jarhead," based on Anthony Swofford's best seller about his modern-day experiences in the Marines, has its moments, it never quite attains its loftiest goals. Read the full review

TO SUM UP
A third-generation U.S. Marine and his cohorts sustain themselves with comedy and camaraderie in the blazing desert of Iraq and Kuwait. Based on the memoirs of Anthony Swofford's disorienting firsthand experience during the Gulf War, the "jarheads" cope with a country they don't understand, an enemy they can't see and a cause they don't fully fathom.

FILM FACTS ...

Universal Pictures

'Jarhead'

Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Lucas Black, Chris Cooper
Run time: 115 minutes
Release date: Nov. 4, 2005
Rating: R for pervasive language, some violent images and strong sexual content.
See showtimes

On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

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READ THE REVIEW

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: B
"... a world of gas masks that don't work and anticipated battles that never happen. At its best, Jarhead gets at the isolation that makes men paranoid, especially about what wives and girlfriends are doing back home."

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Austin American-Statesman: 3 of 5 stars
"In the absence of forward movement or deep meanings, the movie does for us what the Marines are doing for themselves: It finds diversion in the moment."

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The Palm Beach Post: C+
"Director Sam Mendes certainly delivers surreal images and chaotic action, but for the man who gave us a new look at the underbelly of suburbia (American Beauty) and humanized the life of a Depression-era assassin (The Road to Perdition), Jarhead represents a less involving and less original vision."