Wednesday, April 12, 2006

JARHEAD (the movie)



Atrocious.

Like Trainspotting, I found this film impossible to like after having read the book, to which it bore little similarity.

I'm not panning it for lack of action. I'm panning it for being nonsense.

An excellent example is the scene where they're observing the officers arguing in the flight control tower (with, in the book, Swofford spotting and Troy on the trigger). They felt that is was clearly an argument about whether to surrender or fight the approaching American forces, and they wanted to shoot the commander who was demanding the outmatched Iraqi forces fight to the end.
When they asked for permission, it was denied, with the rationale that if their commanders' heads were exploding into pink mist, the Iraqis might be less willing to surrender.

Swofford explains that the truth was the opposite - the Marine commanders wanted a fight. They were afraid that if the head of the enemy officer who was insisting suddenly burst apart, the Iraqis might just instantly surrender, as so many others did, and what fun, glory or medals were there in that? They needed that officer alive so their troops would go into combat.

It's a portrait of cynicism, of a grunt's anger at the way soldiers are used, disgust with commanders being so brave about other people's risks.

In the movie, they actually get permission, and just as their about to fire, some "desk jockey" comes in to sit in a lawn chair and watch the impending air strike and tells them they can't shoot, even though it'll make no difference at all. The soldiers are livid at being denied the chance to shoot somebody. In the movie, they just really wanted to kill somebody for the sake of killing somebody, and they threw this tantrum at not being allowed to kill somebody who was about to get blown up.

Well, whatever that's supposed to mean, whatever message that's supposed to convey, it's very, very different from that of the actual event as described in the book. Worse, it's fiction, and the book isn't.

I can't see why they changed it, except that an air strike looks cool on film and people like to watch stuff blow up.

To make up for taking all the point and truth out of the story, they ended with this preposterous voice over spewing line after line of utter nonsense that's supposed to somehow acquire meaning or merit from the way it's intoned.

Stupid, stupid movie, named after, though only barely related to, a pretty good book.