Welcome to the suck.
Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the US Marine Corps) follows Anthony "Swoff" Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), a third-generation enlistee, from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, sporting a sniper's rifle and a hundred-pound ruck 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.
Jamie Foxx portrays Sergeant Sykes, a Marine lifer who heads up Swofford's scout/sniper platoon, while Peter Sarsgaard is Swoff's friend and mentor, Troy, a die-hard member of STA - their elite Marine Unit.
An irreverent and true account of a war that was antiseptically packaged a decade ago, Jarhead is laced with dark wit, honest inquisition and episodes that are at once surreal and poignant, tragic and absurd. Jarhead is based on Marine Anthony Swofford's bracing memoir that took readers into his disorienting first-hand experience in the Gulf War.
Special Agent Matti
What Jarhead tells you is that it sucks to be a Marine, especially a Marine with any kind of brain. And don't get me started on war. The special effects are awesome: you won't even know where they are.
MA 15+ (Strong themes and violence, strong sexual references and sex scenes, frequent coarse language)
122 minutes (2:02 hours)
Film: 9 February 2006