Can you believe this movie Jarhead???

[Cathedral]

Originally posted by UGS
Kinda like the guy who sent the armed forces to the Gulf, right?

He's a prime example, Yes.

[Keeyth]

Originally posted by EbDawson
Yes but that's the guy in the beginning. By then end of the book/movie he's quite disillusioned.

My point is they are making it sound like it's such a great thing to be at war and such a great job that he "thanks God for every day he gives me in the Corps" and all that BS, when in reality, this war is a mockery of what real wars SHOULD be about.

A real war should happen when our freedom or country or our people are in danger or have been attacked.

Iraq was never any danger to us.

Iraq didn't attack us.

Can anybody tell me why in the FUCK we haven't found bin Laden?
A guy who is in need of a dialysis machine on a regular basis???

Can anybody tell me what right we had to even THINK about going to war with another country before the business of getting bin Laden was taken care of???

Is there some reason why we gave up on bin Laden so fast???

Didn't he supposedly attack us and start this whole military action???

What right did our administration have to go into a frivolous war and give up the hunt for this guy???

Or is he really just a scapegoat for an attack our present administration and President co-engineered so that they could achieve their real goal? (War with Iraq, getting the guy who attacked daddy Bush and all his oil, contracts for Haliburton, etc.)

This movie is being advertised as a glorified recruitment film for this war, and it sickens me.

[BITEYOASS]

Tell you what, getting rocket attacks once every month sure as hell wasn't fun.

[Warham]

Keeyth, I'd suggest you SEE the movie before writing a review.

[Keeyth]

Don't really need to. I can see what they are trying to do just from the promotions.

You should go see Wag the Dog again.

[Warham]

I'm sure you thought Blackhawk Down was a promotional tool for the military as well.

[Keeyth]

Nope. Not at all.

[Keeyth]

Originally posted by Warham
Keeyth, I'd suggest you SEE the movie before writing a review.

Here's a review for ya:

LOADED, READY, AND BORED

Bruce Newman
Mercury News
Published: Friday, November 4, 2005

There's something disorienting about a movie that tries as hard as ``Jarhead'' to be both pro-soldier and anti-war. It's like a car with bumper stickers that say ``Support Our Troops'' and ``Mean people suck.'' You don't know whether to salute it, pass it or wait to see if it has a nervous breakdown.

In ``Jarhead,'' director Sam Mendes attempts to capture the disorienting experience of fighting a war that comes and goes before its foot soldiers ever get their feet wet. When they finally do, it is in the muck of oil wells set on fire by retreating Iraqi troops. The movie has gotten bogged down long before that, however; it just never catches fire.

Mendes, who proved with ``American Beauty'' and ``Road to Perdition'' that he prefers working in the dark, never brings ``Jarhead'' to life until he arrives at the unearthly oil well fires that are about as close to combat as the picture ever comes. In the bright glare of the Arabian desert, the movie's story -- to the extent that it can be said to have one -- and several of its characters seem to vanish in the haze.

Only a first-rate cast -- headed by Jake Gyllenhaal, and made memorable by the performances of Jamie Foxx and Peter Sarsgaard -- saves ``Jarhead'' from looking like a dead duck, covered in oil.

Adapted from Anthony Swofford's bestselling account of his training to be a Marine sniper in the first Gulf War, ``Jarhead'' is a meditation on the banality of warfare. Much of what director Mendes and writer William Broyles Jr. (``Apollo 13'') attempt to capture is the boredom that besets the warrior tribes when the only common enemy to fight is authority.

Movies always seem to be fighting the last war, and ``Jarhead'' takes dead aim at the Vietnam-era insanity of such pictures as ``Full Metal Jacket,'' ``Apocalypse Now'' and ``MASH'' -- which satirizes the American war effort in Vietnam, even though it's set in Korea. ``Jarhead'' often seems to want to be a sour ``MASH,'' but the funny moments trail off into nothing. The writing isn't sharp enough to sustain satire, and the characters surrounding Swofford (who is played by Gyllenhaal) are as broad and thin as the paper effigies the sniper squad uses as targets.

Like a lot of pictures that begin as memoirs, ``Jarhead'' has the unshapely feel of a life waiting to begin. At 20, Swoff joins up because his father and his uncle were in the Corps and then spends a lot of the movie regretting what he has done. During boot camp, Swofford infuriates his drill instructor, who demands to know why he enlisted. ``Sir, I got lost on the way to college, sir!'' he replies, digging himself in deeper.

Meanwhile, back at the Quonset hut, the recruits engage in some interesting tribal rituals, the most invigorating of which involves using a blowtorch to monogram new arrivals, as if they were pledges in a particularly sadistic frat house. Instead of Delta Tau Delta, the brand says USMC.

Swofford is a ``jarhead,'' the sometimes-pejorative term used to describe the high and tight haircut of a Marine recruit. The Corps fills this empty vessel with the mechanics of killing the jarhead's natural enemy. His tutor in the art of long-range precision shooting is Staff Sgt. Sykes (played by Jamie Foxx), who adds an electrifying charge to the boilerplate boot camp screaming.

Swofford's book relied on his account of the process of being trained for the Marines' elite legion of scout/snipers, but the movie lacks the eroticism of man and gun intertwined in their snakelike embrace. All Swofford can do is take target practice until Saddam Hussein launches his ill-advised invasion of Kuwait in 1990. And until then, all we can do is wait with him for a movie to break out. Watching people go out of their minds with boredom is every bit as electrifying as it sounds.

When his unit's orders to deploy to the desert finally arrive, Swofford and his buddies are getting juiced up for combat watching the air cavalry attack scene from ``Apocalypse Now,'' performing a sort of sing-along ``Ride of the Valkyries.'' For the few seconds that Francis Ford Coppola's great battle sequence is on the screen, it so thoroughly dwarfs everything around it that ``Jarhead'' seems to stall.

In the desert, the soldiers train endlessly and wait, unafraid of battle but petrified that their faithless wives and girlfriends will earn a spot on the Wall of Shame. Their fear fantasies are fed by the arrival one day of a pornographic video of a disgruntled wife and an extremely gruntled neighbor. Semper fi, oh my, my!

The tape shows more action in the bedroom than any of these Marines has seen so far in the desert, and Swofford gradually becomes unhinged. Like Mr. Roberts before him, he frets that the war might pass him by while he and his fellow Marines are playing gas mask football games for CNN. It's a video war, and the scoped rifle Swofford has brought to the mother of all battles has no joystick, and he has no joy. ``Are we ever going to get to kill anyone?'' he asks.

`Jarhead'** 1/2

http://ae.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ui/mercurynews/movie.html?id=448082&reviewId=19420

See???? They are making it seem as if going into this war will be just as mellow, never seeing combat, and covincing the lazy kids of today that they can join up and go sit on their asses all day just like they do now with their video games and all will be fun and games.

AND they'll get to enjoy the "Honor" and "Dream of Serving their country" without having to do much other than sit around. Only the reality is this war is different, and most likely they will get wounded or die. And this film seems to be trying to reel them in with false pretenses.

I have a problem with that. Sorry.

[Warham]

They said right off the top it's anti-war.

What else do you want?

[EbDawson]

Originally posted by Keeyth
This movie is being advertised as a glorified recruitment film for this war, and it sickens me.

Still have to disagree with you. Actually I agree with you on Iraq (for the most part).

As far as the film goes, the producers asked the US Military/Marines if they would cooperate on the film. The military said no. Not even "well if you change a few parts, maybe", they just told them no. Several ex-military personnel were advisors on they film as well as the dude who wrote the book. But the Gov't/Military wanted no part of it. The main character, I've read (I have no desire to see the film) comes to believe that his enlistment was a mistake.

[Keeyth]

Originally posted by Warham
They said right off the top it's anti-war.

What else do you want?

It's pro-soldier, which is all they need to get new recruits.
It makes it look like being a soldier is easy. Just a bunch of laying around and waiting... ...in this case for nothing much to happen at all. It's a film aimed at trapping the youth of this country into enliswting in my opinion.

[Keeyth]

Originally posted by EbDawson
Still have to disagree with you. Actually I agree with you on Iraq (for the most part).

As far as the film goes, the producers asked the US Military/Marines if they would cooperate on the film. The military said no. Not even "well if you change a few parts, maybe", they just told them no. Several ex-military personnel were advisors on they film as well as the dude who wrote the book. But the Gov't/Military wanted no part of it. The main character, I've read (I have no desire to see the film) comes to believe that his enlistment was a mistake.

Yes, but he views it as a mistake because he's bored, and because nothing ever happens to him, which in my mind is lulling kids who might see it into a false sense of security about how dangerous it really would be to join up.

If they do leave the movie feeling like "Hey, that wouldn't be so bad to go over there for a while and kick back and have the army pay for my college afterwards", they are going to be in for a big surprise when they find out this war is nothing like the one in the film, and they are probably going to get wounded or worse, and that just makes it seem like it's a sneaky kind of recruitment film to me.

Mind you, I do believe it is still worth it to join up regardless of the danger if our country is in fact in danger and in need of protecting, but THIS war, and our reasons for being in it, are a sham, and definitely not worth dying for.

[Seshmeister]

Originally posted by Keeyth
Don't really need to. I can see what they are trying to do just from the promotions.

It's funny last week I was reading a thread at www.imdb.com about this movie which was from the exact opposite standpoint.

A guy had started one saying that noone should go see this film because it was a bunch of leftist anti American propoganda.

He hadn't seen it either...:D

[Nickdfresh]

Originally posted by Warham
Keeyth, I'd suggest you SEE the movie before writing a review.

I agree actually. It's pretty dangerous to review movies before you see it. I heard in the promos this film was made by the producers of AMERICAN BEAUTY. I highly doubt it's mindlessly pro-war. Anyways, I was in the GULF for a short time. I'll let you know how real it is...

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by Keeyth
It's pro-soldier, which is all they need to get new recruits.
It makes it look like being a soldier is easy. Just a bunch of laying around and waiting... ...in this case for nothing much to happen at all. It's a film aimed at trapping the youth of this country into enliswting in my opinion.

In your opinion?

Watch the movie....then make a damned opinion.