Anthony "Swoff" Swofford could have gone to college; instead he enlisted in the US Marine Corps… he soon starts to wonder if he made the right choice. He isn't very enthusiastic but shows aptitude with a rifle and ends up a Sniper Scout. When Saddam Hussein's forces invade Kuwait in the summer of 1990 it looks as though Swoff and his comrades are about to see action. They deploy to Saudi Arabia and await their orders to cross the border. They wait and they wait and they wait; as the weeks and months pass they stew in the desert and boredom takes its toll. Tempers fray, discipline breaks down and Swoff starts to question his sanity. When the order is finally given the war moves so fast that the Marines are behind the action; all they see is the aftermath of air attacks and burning oil fields then just as it looks as if they are going to see action the war is over.This is unusual for a 'war' movie in that there is so little actual war. Before that we get training scenes that will be familiar to anybody who has seen 'Full Metal Jacket' and the bulk of the film that shows us the marines waiting to go into battle. These scenes impressively capture the boredom and frustration the men suffer. Some of the ill-discipline is rather surprising; one can only hope that it is exaggerated for dramatic effect… especially the scene where Swoff threatens a fellow Marine with a loaded rifle! The scenes showing what the squad see during the war are disturbing without being too upsetting; most notably the night scene amongst the burning oil wells. The cast is solid with Jake Gyllenhaal dominating as Swoff. Overall I'd recommend this to anybody wanting a war film that is somewhat different to most; importantly for a film that is largely about boredom I never found it boring.

The people who produced this piece of junk apparently saw themselves as the successors of the line of movies made 30 or 40 years ago that were intent on showing the US military in Vietnam to be a bunch of worthless bloodthirsty losers. See Platoon for an example. This show has the same overall plot, just moved up in time to the first war in Iraq.There is no one in this movie that has any desirable qualities. The commanders are idiots. The NCOs are callous. The men are deranged. The wives send them home videos of themselves getting laid by their neighbors back home, and their girlfriends cheat on them and abandon them. Nobody, literally nobody, is worth a damn.OK, so the individuals are no good. What about the military itself? A bunch of incompetent fools who don't fight well, don't use their equipment properly, and who are disgusting boors.Negative ratings are not allowed. Even a zero is not allowed. So I have to give it a 1.

Jarhead is a 2005 biographical drama military film based on U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford's 2003 memoir of the same name, directed by Sam Mendes, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Swofford with Jamie Foxx, Peter Sarsgaard and Chris Cooper. "Jarhead" (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows Swoff, a third-generation enlistee, from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, sporting a sniper's rifle and a hundred-pound rucksack on his back through Middle East deserts with no cover from intolerable heat or from Iraqi soldiers, always potentially just over the next horizon. Swoff and his fellow Marines sustain themselves with sardonic humanity and wicked comedy on blazing desert fields in a country they don't understand against an enemy they can't see for a cause they don't fully fathom.

I can take or leave war films, however, I have to say this one is pretty good, especially as it contains a real lack of any actual fighting.It centres on one man's - Anthony Swofford's - personal tale of life in the modern (well, early nineties) American army. He's not an officer, or in any particular position of authority - he's a grunt, a foot-soldier, or a 'Jarhead.' After Saddam Hussein first invades Kuwait, the US ship out their Jarheads to wait for the order to attack. This is the story of the wait.Therefore, we never see our Jarheads charging heroically over the top or anything similar. It's just about the wait. Now, that may not sound like the most exciting premise for a movie, but I think that's the point. Jarhead isn't really meant to be exciting. It's more of a drama about men from lower class America, who don't really have many career options and enlist as a way of making a living.I really enjoyed it. Jake Gyllenhaal gives a great performance as the put-upon Jarhead at the centre of the film and, overall, it's well worth a watch, even if you're not a fan of war movies in general.http://thewrongtreemoviereviews.blogspot.co.uk/