Jarhead.
I went to see Jarhead last night at my local multiplex. I went to this film with much anticipation, the trailer was probably one of the best I've ever seen and I'm a fan of Sam Mendes' 2 previous films, American Beauty and Road to Perdition. So I collected my tickets from the box office, free tickets of course, I enjoy certain privileges(Ohhh Yeah) I got my big ass bag of skittles and set forth to find my seat.
I do believe that the film company have slightly miss sold this film. The trailer and a few little spots I've seen have pretty much portrayed this as a war movie It's only now that people are seeing it that it comes out that it's not really any thing of the sort.
Jarhead is not a war movie, It's a film about soldiers, Marines to be accurate and what they did in the run up to the first Gulf war. Which was nothing. American sent close to 500,0000 troops to the middle east in the months running up to the conflict. The war lasted 4 days.
It's a psychological comedy drama. Showing the frustration these people go through. It's not an anti or pro war film, It's not an intuitions of the current US administration. It's told through the eyes of the average marine on the ground and rightly most of these people do not care for the politics. This is their job, this is what they have to do. The film comes in around 2hours running time but It was pretty clear to me that it was supposed to be longer. It was a shame because there was a notable absence of scenes and altough including these could have pushed it into the 2 1/2, 3 hour epic mark it could've also pushed this film into classic status. It could have been this decades Deer Hunter. (Very funny and heartbreaking scene involving a video of the Deer Hunter)
I liked it, it's darkly comic and interesting to see the mental strain these men go through doing nothing.
Don't go to see this film if you want a war film, this isn't it, don't go watch this if you want action, this isn't it. Go see this film if you want to see an entertaining and funny character study.
The cast are great and all put in good performances. I'd give it between 3.5 and 4 out of 5 but I'm not rating it so I can't give it any thing. I liked it though.
posted by Dan at 11:14 AM
1 Comments:
That's an interesting and good write-up man. It's a hard film to love I think, because Mendes gets the tone wrong. He wants you to laugh at and feel sorry for the guys that he doesn't seem to have any connection with. Having said that, the performances are superb, and I'm just really sorry that they didn't find space for some more of the prose from the book, there's a great bit about them field-fucking the army, the hippy peaceniks and everyone else that would have been the defining moment of the film. Still, I did like it, as far as it went, and were I a rater, would give it 3/5.
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