Jarhead.2005 Review

He is trained to kill with a single shot from a .357 Magnum or an M40A1 rifle. He is conditioned to hate the enemy, endure the heat, and worship his rifle. But when he is deployed to the Saudi Arabian desert, he finds no enemy to fight.

It teaches you that the enemy isn't always the guy in the sand-colored uniform. Sometimes the enemy is the sun, the boredom, the oil rain, and the voice on the radio telling you to stand down. jarhead.2005 is not a film about the first Gulf War. It is a film about the war inside the mind of a young man holding a rifle he isn't allowed to use. jarhead.2005

The climax of the action comes when Swoff finally spots an Iraqi convoy through his scope. He has the shot. He has the authorization. But just as his finger tightens on the trigger, a superior officer radios: "Wait for the bombers." The bombs fall, incinerating the target. Swoff never fires his weapon. He is trained to kill with a single shot from a

Rating: ★★★★½ (Essential anti-war cinema) It teaches you that the enemy isn't always

Instead, becomes a visceral study of boredom. The Marines sit in a makeshift camp nicknamed "Camp Hole-in-the-Wall." They watch porno tapes, play football with inflated chem suits, and perform endless drills. They are a killing machine with no one to kill.

Jake Gyllenhaal gives the best performance of his early career—all hollow eyes and clenched jaw. Sam Mendes directs the desert like it’s a character, hungry and indifferent. And when Swoff finally fires his rifle into the air at the end, screaming into the empty night, you understand the tragedy: He came home with zero confirmed kills, but he is dead all the same.