Jarhead: Critic Reviews

if not a classic war film, at least a top-notch and engrossing imitation of one.

Watching Jarhead, these unvarnished snapshots of what can really happen among U.S. combat troops all but slap you with their observational force.

Jarhead is a movie that walks up to some of the most urgent and painful issues of our present circumstance, clears its throat loudly and says nothing.

Stunning to look at and to listen to, with elegantly chosen pop songs unspooling on the soundtrack under each fresh new horror.

Director Sam Mendes' third screen outing pretty well nails Swofford's tone, which was mordant without being disrespectful, and, in fact, is begrudgingly reverent of the Corps.

What's so good about the movie is Gyllenhaal's refusal to show off; he doesn't seem jealous of the camera's attention when it goes to others and is content, for long stretches, to serve simply as a prism though which other young men can be observed.

The film evokes Three Kings, Full Metal Jacket, Catch-22, and other touchstones of the genre without ever establishing its own identity.

The movie is oppressively heavy even when mischievously lighthearted.

The movie has some of the washed-out look of David O. Russell's excellent Three Kings, but none of the edge.

I dare anyone to watch this bold exercise in postponed gratification and not come away with a new, disturbed sense of the genre.

Jarhead will leave many viewers satisfied and others scratching their heads. But everybody will be asking questions.

Jarhead does an impressive job of articulating the weird, often volatile convergence of the antisocial with the utterly loyal that seems to be the M.O. of a lot of men not yet grown.

Jarhead is utterly predictable (boys endure tough training; boys encounter another culture and are baffled), studded with first-rate performances.

Jarhead has an oddly amorphous and inconclusive feeling to it.

It is not often that a movie catches exactly what it was like to be this person in this place at this time, but Jarhead does.

A good, not great movie.

Although the picture suffers a narrative letdown in the third act that leaves its central characters -- and, alas, its audience -- in the muck of anticlimax, Jarhead has moments of real glory.

It's the cinematic equivalent of marching in circles.

Nicely acted, beautifully shot and pretty much devoid of action and context, Jarhead has to be considered one of the year's biggest failures, simply because so much talent went into a film so empty.

It's a good thing Jarhead features strong acting; otherwise the uneven ratio of exposition to action would become unbearable.

In all respects, Jarhead is straight from the horse's mouth. See it.

Sam Mendes' third feature has numerous arresting moments but never achieves a confident, consistent or sufficiently audacious tone.

Do I quibble over details? Details are all the movie offers.

Jarhead can't shoot its way out of its own cliches.