Jess and I went to Jarhead tonight. We both enjoyed it a lot, though Jess was sort of sick and was out of it during the last part of the film.

The movie is based on the book of the same title written by author (and main character in the story) Anthony Swafford. The story follows Swafford and a group of fellow soldiers from bootcamp, into Gulf War I and back home again. It's not your typical war movie. There's not a lot of action. In fact, it's sort of anti-climatic like that. I won't go into too much about that for the sake of not giving away the movie, but if you're looking for action you'd best look somewhere else.

But if what you're looking for is a gritty, fairly realistic portrayal of the experiences of a modern soldier this will be a good one for you. At least, I assume it's fairly realistic. I'm not a combat veteran so I can't say for sure, but I certainly didn't detect a lot of the usual Hollywood war movie B.S.

There was some of that, of course, and it wasn't exactly subtle. At one point in the film a commanding officer got fairly obnoxious about "protecting the oil," and throughout the film one smart-ass soldier kept complaining about all the hypocrisy he perceived in the military around him. That last part climaxed with the soldier complaining to his superior officer that the limits being placed on what he could and could not tell a group of journalists was "just like" what Saddam Hussein was doing to the Iraqis. It sounded exactly like something that would have come out of Michael Moore or Cindy Sheehan's mouth. It certainly didn't sound like something a soldier would say to his commanding officer, but again: I've never served in the military. I'm not going to pretend like I'm some sort of authority on how soldiers act. It just seemed sort of contrived to me.

But that sort of thing was limited and didn't detract much from the overall enjoyability of the movie, which turned out to be quite poignant in that it really opens a window onto the raw, emotional struggle our soldiers face during the course of their duty to this country.

If you're planning on a trip to the theater in the next week or so I'd definitely give a thought to seeing this one.

Update:

Here's a review from a Gulf War I vet. He didn't much like the movie.

Looking back at my review I think I should state more clearly that, from an emotional perspective, I think this movie is fairly accurate in that it depicts some of the tough issues soldiers have to deal with. Unfaithful love interests at home, for one thing, and standing by on the edge of battle for months on end with nothing to do for another.

What is not realistic, however, is the antics of most of the soldiers. I do not believe that our soldiers would talk back to their commanders the way they did in this movie, nor do I think they behave in the field the way some of the soldiers in this movie behaved. Watching the soldiers in the movie strip themselves nearly naked in the middle of the desert while dancing around a bonfire and firing their weapons into the air gives me an idea of what it must feel like to be on the winning side of a battle, but the idea that our soldiers would actually behave like that is not all that believable.

Unfortunately, as a life-long civilian, I have a hard time talking about how our soldiers act while deployed. Because, really, outside of input from people I trust who have been soldiers, I have no idea.