Over the vacation I watched the movie Jarhead. Its based on a best-selling book written by a marine on his experiences in Saudi Arabia pre-Desert Storm and later his Desert Storm experience fighting in Kuwait. The movie starts of with a famous “Full Metal Jacket” scene but thats as far as the similarities go. The movie isn’t action packed since its based on truth. You see the movie follows a scout/sniper platoon based in the desert outside Kuwait. Desert Storm was mostly fought from the sky and Sea with very little ground work. Since this movie follows foot soldiers they didn’t have a lot to do, unlike the ground soldiers now in Iraq. It takes on a really interesting perspective showing you the emotional side of the war from the side liners view.
Even though the whole movie takes place in the empty desert it was still entertaining to watch even though there was no war action. There was always something going on in the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire originally vied for the lead role in the film and thank god they went with Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) instead. Jake looks like a marine and looks like he can kick ass unlike both Leonardo and Tobey. I actually didn’t recognize Jake until after the movie was over, he looked really different then when he played the messed up kid in Donnie Darko. Overall I give this movie a 3.5 out of 5. It was the best movie I watched over the vacation, the other movie I watched was Oliver Twist and that pretty much sucked.
