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.