Jarhead…
I know this is an older movie (2005), but I had never seen it. I tend to go on kicks where I will watch everything an actor has done I can get my hands on. Recently I’ve been watching a lot of Chris O’Dowd (from the IT Crowd) and Jake Gyllenhall (after seeing Prince of Persia).
To start, I have a hard time watching war movies, specifically ones about the Gulf war. My dad was a Marine at the time and trying very hard to get shipped out to Iraq. The only thing I really remember about that time is the feeling that nothing was really certain until the war was over. Luckily that was quick, but then I got to see the aftermath of the war too. My dad never went – he trained boys to go. He was a Staff Sergeant (maybe only a Sergeant at the time) and was told he was of more use here training troops than he would be over there sitting around. ”Sergeant Dad” as the kids he trained called him, lost some military sons in the Gulf, and I lost some brothers. Anytime I have tried to watch a movie like this it has always made me feel like that uncertain little girl who was too young to understand everything that was going on around her, but knew it was serious and people weren’t always going to come back.
I say all of this to explain why I had never seen this film. I didn’t want to. I’ve been a good little military kid and repressed a lot of my fears from that time. Movies set in war zones tend to bring up emotions I’ve trained myself not to deal with, and I don’t like it. This movie was so compelling on a basic human level though, that it blew me away. They way the capture the Marine Corps, the life in the barracks, and the war itself is so utterly indescribable to me.
In the beginning of the film, it felt as though I was back on my dad’s base, visiting with my mom, seeing people on screen I once knew. The life of a Marine fit every story I’ve ever heard my dad tell. The war scenes made their political statements without seeming too heavy handed. By focusing on the soldiers as characters and how they were living, so many messages came across without the need of the normal neon sign style of direction. The points were made that we supplied weapons to Hussein, we might just be going in for oil, and all the other bad things that could probably be said about the first Gulf war. It was done so eloquently though that it fit the plot and didn’t seem out of place. It also didn’t seem like a rant from a soap box. It almost seemed as though the message was, “Yeah, this might be why we were there/here, but it’s too late to change that, let’s try to move forward.” I loved that about this film.
All in all, this was a great movie, one I have added to my must see list. I would recommend it, and that means something… because I really hate war movies. :)
