Synopses & Reviews
Academy Award winner Jamie Foxx and Jake Gyllenhaal star in this critically acclaimed, brilliantly unconventional war story from Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes.
Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows Swoff (Gyllenhaal) from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, where he sports a sniper rifle through Middle East deserts that provide no cover from the heat or Iraqi soldiers. Swoff and his fellow Marines sustain themselves with sardonic humanity and wicked comedy on blazing desert fields in a country they don't understand against an enemy they can't see for a cause they don't fully grasp.
Review
"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." Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Review
"Jarhead is an existential docudrama: cool and funny, vivid and remote at the same time. (Grade: B+)" Entertainment Weekly
Review
"The invigorating thing about Jarhead is it makes us encounter the truth in its undigested form." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"It's a powerful experience that measures the human cost of its war and all war, really less in terms of battlefield statistics than in the subtle, degenerative psychological effect that it sends rippling through a generation and a society." Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Review
"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." A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Review
"The film evokes Three Kings, Full Metal Jacket, Catch-22, and other touchstones of the genre without ever establishing its own identity." Boston Globe
Review
"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." USA Today
Review
"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." Philadelphia Inquirer
Description
Special Features:
- Available Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
- Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish (Dolby Digital 5.1)
- "Swoff's Fantasies" with Commentary by Director Sam Mendes and Editor Walter Murch
- News Interviews in Full with Commentary by Director Sam Mendes and Editor Walter Murch
- Deleted Scenes with Introduction by Director Sam Mendes and Editor Walter Murch
- Feature Commentary with Director Sam Mendes
- Feature Commentary with Screenwriter William Broyles, Jr. and Author Anthony Swofford