I had heard that "Jarhead" was another "anti-war" movie. This review at SLATE confirms it.
Killjoys
The hell of not shooting Iraqis in Jarhead.
slate.com
"The director, Sam Mendes, and the screenwriter, William Broyles Jr., showed a lot of guts in taking on a book like Jarhead: War movies generally build to combat and explosive release, but Swofford barely engaged with—he barely even saw—the Iraqis, who were largely taken out by the Air Force from high above. As an accomplished theater director, Mendes probably approached Jarhead as a kind of martial Waiting for Godot: The characters refer to the Marine Corps as "the Suck," which suggests a lot of things, among them a corrosive, Beckett-like vacuum. And Mendes and his cinematographer, Roger Deakins, create some surreal stage pictures—of soldiers against a sky turned a malignant charcoal by distant burning oil wells, of the protagonist sitting beside charred remains of men around what once was a campfire, an image out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." |
