Jarhead (2005)

This film is really incredible I like it a lot, directed by Sam Mendes starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and Jamie Foxx who all give some of their best performances especially from Sarsgaard, this is the true story from war veteran Anthony Swofford who wrote the screenplay based on his book and the story is a young man searching for his place in life and he's the normal American and decides to enlist in the marines, just like his dad. However when he gets deployed into the Gulf he finds war is not as glory filled as he heard, he must wait for the war to come to him.

The story goes on to tell his experience and its a really experimental film in the war genre because it shows almost no combat and when it does our protagonist literally closes his eyes, its writing is well used the narration is not just used to tell us irritating backstory like a lot of films do, in fact it intentionally shields a lot of backstory's from our views, this is excellent because it doesn't show you who they are, the film says 'no backstory we are just going to show you these young men in a year of their life and their actions in certain situations', and then when this specific period of their life ends you maybe get to know a little about them and make up your mind its the most honest depiction of men in war since Paths of Glory.

The reason I feel so confident in the honesty of this film and its story is because not only was it written by the protagonist, it was written by another veteran from the Vietnam war. There is a great theme here that young American men as young as eighteen are being told how amazing war is and all the glory, but in the end these young men realise that no, a lot of polishing is put into the making of a war ( this is of course my personal opinion part of the review ), so in conclusion this a great war film and I highly recommend it, however if you are easily offended by swearing and honest behaviour of bored people and how their morale's slightly lower in situations like war then don't watch this film because I feel that you wont be able to see past this and see the greatness of this very underrated film.