Movie review: Jarhead

So begins the task of watching the entire/as much as possible filmography of Peter Sarsgaard, my newest favorite actor.

This movie is a war movie, which I purportedly do not like, but still for some reason continue to watch... the reason for watching this one is because of a certain actor being in it. He looked pretty nice in this movie despite being nearly bald as a Marine. At least he didn't have awful facial hair. He talked nicely in this movie, and I enjoyed that. In some interview of him I think he mentioned perhaps he has a nice voice because he's from southern Illinois (or was it Indiana? One of those midwestern I states). Regardless of how it came about, he has a pleasant sounding voice. He should read an audiobook as well. I would pay money for that, which is saying something.

It was sort of different than what I guess I expected. The colors were.. notable in that the movie looked very bright. It did take place in the desert so I assume the brightness was to convey the brightness of the middle eastern desert. Sam Mendes directed this movie, which is interesting because he also directed Skyfall, which is one of my favorite movies. I didn't know that he had directed this movie until seeing his name in the opening credits. The cinematography was also done by the same person who did the cinematography for Skyfall, which was very well done in terms of cinematography. Interesting, right? 

The beginning of the movie bore similarities to Full Metal Jacket, replete with the "There are many like it, but this one is mine" and other boot camp particularities. There was actually less killing in this movie, it seems, than there might have been, which was kind of unique for a war movie. My favorite quote from this movie is "Every war is different. Every war is the same." The movie was based on an autobiographical book/memoir which might be interesting to read if I can get my hands on a copy sometime. I would say that I actually decently liked this movie, which kind of surprised me. I haven't watched any movies set during the Gulf War aside from this one, so the change of war settings was interesting. This movie was definitely less brutal than Saving Private Ryan. 

I found this interesting interview with the director.

As a closing thought, I wonder why the Middle Eastern countries can't seem to get it together. Since before I was born there's been violent conflict there. And it continues to this day. At least Bush isn't president anymore (not that I was really old enough to truly realize the significance of his presidency when he was president, but regardless), but what we've got now is decidedly worse for other reasons.