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Jarhead
2005
Based on former Marine Anthony Swofford's best-selling 2003 book about his pre-Desert Storm experiences in Saudi Arabia and about his experiences fighting in Kuwait. Read more
| Starring | Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx, Peter Sarsgaard, Jacob Vargas |
|---|---|
| Director | Sam Mendes |
| Genres | Action/Adventure, Drama |
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Jarhead
Based on former Marine Anthony Swofford's best-selling 2003 book about his pre-Desert Storm experiences in Saudi Arabia and about his experiences fighting in Kuwait.
| Starring | Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx, Peter Sarsgaard, Jacob Vargas, Chris Cooper, Dennis Haysbert, Katherine Randolph, Skyler Stone, Mike Akrawi, Wade Williams, Matthew Atherton |
|---|---|
| Director | Sam Mendes |
| Studio | UNIVERSAL PICTURES UK |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 58 mins Blu-ray: 1 hr 58 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Action/Adventure, Drama |
| Language | English |
| Hearing-impaired | English |
| Released | DVD: 15 May 2006 Blu-ray: unknown HD DVD: 04 Dec 2006 Production year: 2005 |
| Format | DVD |
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Critics' reviews (4)
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An eye-opening experience....[Mendes] forges, perhaps, a new kind of drama: a portrait of war stripped of all glamour and design.... JARHEAD is an existential docudrama: cool and funny, vivid and remote at the same time
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Quizzical, visually striking... JARHEAD provides some kind of reportage of a war whose consequences we haven't yet begun to understand
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Most helpful member's review
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57 out of 66 people found this review helpful
American
After running out of life options, Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhall) has just joined the Marines. Under the tutelage of his commanding officers (including a pronounced Jamie Foxx), hazing from his fellow enlistees, and the promise of eventual freedom from the armed forces, Swofford loses himself in the experience of being a soldier. As Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990, Swofford and his squad are shipped over to the Middle East to await activation. Baffled by his new surroundings and unable to experience the violence of a soldier's life like he was promised, Swofford wanders though the first Gulf War disillusioned, bored, and angry as he waits for the meaning behind the madness to sink in.
'Jarhead' is a competent war film, detailing the era when computers and precision wrestled away the fighting from the grunts. Mendes is after the impotency (often literally) of the modern soldier, not the bigger political parallel of war in Iraq (though he does slip into speechifying and underlining here and there). In book form, Swofford's pathway was personal and focused. Regardless of how lush and fully realized the imagery is, 'Jarhead' as a movie is stuck permanently in basic training.
Good, watchable movie. -
Most recent members' review
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30 out of 44 people found this review helpful
Brilliant
Another great film from Sam Mendes. After "American Beauty" and "Road to Perdition" (all very good films), I was keen to see his latest creation.
The whole idea of the film, that the American soldiers head off to Iraq in search of some action and instead do sweet FA, is cleverly done (and probably true, definatly more so than any of the pro-American war movies that we often see today).
Great performance from Jake Gyllenhaal (as per usual), well direced shot and scripted.
I also found it very funny, far more than I thought it would be. -
News and features
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Marvellous Mendes
- 15 Sep 2009
Departures: that seems like a good starting point for a discussion of Sam Mendes, the British director of Away We Go, Revolutionary Road, and The Road to Perdition… Mendes has made five films in ten years, each very different, and yet all of them concerned, one way or another, with roads not taken, sudden shifts in direction, and the difficulty of finding the right path. Funnily enough, none of these themes seems to apply to Mendes himself. Nor do the rocky marital relationships that... Read more
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Jarhead - HD DVD Version
Based on former Marine Anthony Swofford's best-selling 2003 book about his pre-Desert Storm experiences in Saudi Arabia and about his experiences fighting in Kuwait....
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Jarhead - BLU-RAY Version
Based on former Marine Anthony Swofford's best-selling 2003 book about his pre-Desert Storm experiences in Saudi Arabia and about his experiences fighting in Kuwait....
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