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| Director
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Sam Mendes
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| Starring
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Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx,
Lucas Black |
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| The plot of
Jarhead |
Six months in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait offers a
series of dramatic and traumatic experiences for
Marine Anthony "Swoff" Swofford (Gyllenhaal)
as he fights in Operation: Desert Storm. |
Jarhead
Movie Review
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Review by Todd
McCarthy:
A Universal release,
presented in association with MP Kappa Prods., of a
Lucy Fisher/Doug Wick production in association with
Neal Street Prods. Produced by Wick, Fisher. Executive
producers, Sam Mercer, Bobby Cohen. Co-producer, Pippa
Harris. Directed by Sam Mendes. Screenplay, William
Broyles Jr., based on the book by Anthony Swofford.
Tony "Swoff" Swofford - Jake Gyllenhaal
Troy - Peter Sarsgaard
Kruger - Lucas Black
Fergus - Brian Geraghty
Cortez - Jacob Vargas
Escobar - Laz Alonso
Fowler - Evan Jones
Pinko - Ivan Fenyo
Lt. Col. Kazinski - Chris Cooper
Major Lincoln - Dennis Haysbert
D.I. Fitch - Scott MacDonald
Staff Sgt. Sykes - Jamie Foxx
Welty - Kareem Grimes
Doc John - Peter Gail
Foster - Jamie Martz
Julius - Jocko Sims
"Are we ever going
to get to kill anyone?," a young Marine asks after
waiting for months in the Arabian desert for the Persian
Gulf war to begin. The negative answer for him and his
pumped-up fellow grunts who get sent home without seeing
any real action makes "Jarhead" a different
kind of antiwar film -- a war film without a war..more..
Review By Adam
Nayman:
The key line of Sam
Mendes' jarringly non-politicized Jarhead is uttered
about halfway into the film, during an argument between
two US Marines stationed in Saudi Arabia on the eve
of Operation Desert Storm. "To hell with politics,"
one says when confronted with the suggestion that it
was the US government who supplied Saddam Hussein with
the artillery presently being aimed between his eyes.
"We're here now."It's an expertly conveyed
sense of here-and-now-ness that makes this grunt's-eye-view
of war sing. Even as the script -- adapted by William
Broyles Jr. from a successful memoir by former Marine
Anthony Swofford (played in the film by Jake Gyllenhall,
avec six-pack) -- strains to place dissonant poetry
in the mouths of its beautiful, rifle-toting naïfs,
Mendes the rampaging stylist effortlessly delivers one
genuinely arresting image after another: oil fields
afire under charcoal skies, a crude-drenched horse wandering
amongst the flames. ..More..
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