By Stefan Suh

Jarhead, the third film to be directed by theatre director turned film-maker Sam Mendes, is a true life autobiography of a former Gulf War veteran, Anthony Swofford. A third generation Marine enlistee struggling to come to terms with life not only in the Marines, but with youth.

Mendes film moves almost like a chronological set of events from training in boot camp, to preparation on the field, and finally to Iraq, to engage in war. Swofford is trained as an elite Marine Scout Sniper and drilled endlessly until his skills have been perfected. But when the day comes to be shipped off, it simply turns into a stint of heat exhausted boredom in the Saudi desert, with nothing but more and more training. It’s this mundane existence multiplied by the Marine’s attempts to nullify them that keeps the story moving, as they try and deal with a new modern electronic war. Like one Marine says on the front line, "there better be some action after the Air Force finishes their attack."

Gyllenhaal's AnthonySwofford sits among the sea of Marines in Sam Mendes's Jarhead.

The superior acting is commendable with stellar performances from both Jake Gyllenhaal as Swofford and Peter Skarsgaard as Tory, Swofford’s best friend. But apart from the excellent performances all round, the story like the Three Kings takes on a post modern anti war stance that portrays War not as an honorable or exciting male endeavor, but as a harsh, cruel, and almost ambiguous event. Yet even with this trend, Mendes clearly moves away from the classical hero’s approach like Stone’s Platoon and tries to create a Kubrickesque Full Metal Jacket style approach where you simply follow the characters, almost like a mock documentary. But unlike Full Metal Jacket, which was a searing essay on how men are manufactured into killers by the Marine Corps before they are sent to war, Jarhead lacks any real ideas about war, or the men who fight for them. It seems Mendes is comfortable in keeping the story plain and obscure as Camus’s The Stranger, a pointless war in a world without any real meaning. This does not make Jarhead a pointless film, in fact, it is a very well crafted piece of work, but due to its very message, the story leaves a large hole in reaching the audiences hearts and minds.

Jarhead is rated R and is currently in theaters.