"Jarhead" is not an Army Term

The Michigan Partisan

"Jarhead" review

By Page W. H. Brousseau IV
TIMES STAFF WRITER

When I was in the Marine Corps, I had a roommate named Watters. Everyone called him "Muddy," not so much for any musical talents he possessed, but because that summed him up completely. He would set his alarm for 5 a.m., then hit snooze six times because as he told me, "Five is too early to get up." He would think nothing of driving 40 miles away on a Wednesday night for nickel beer at some out of the way dive. He "acquired" items from fellow Marines, and treated my personal property as nicely as he treated his, which is to say not very well.

For barracks inspection, he would throw his laundry in a rucksack and keep it in the back of his pickup. On one glorious day he came in the room, visibly upset. Someone had stolen his rucksack from the back of his truck. Though I wondered why someone would want his dirty undies, I smiled knowing he was out a $100 ruck.

The image of Watters is what I immediately thought of when I read Andrew Swofford's 2003 book, "Jarhead." Swofford stole from his fellow Marines, shirked duty, took credit for other's work, and thought he was he a typical Marine. In other words, Swofford and Watters would have gotten along just fine.

Marines live in their own world, a place where your actions reflect not only yourself but also over two-hundred years of history. Many Marines have a love/hate relationship with the Corps; this was definitely true for me. I felt that at times the Corps was the only family I would ever want or need. Then other times I wanted a divorce and personal protection order.

Swofford's relationship was decidedly hate/hate. His book was a clearinghouse for "sea stories" and urban legends that Marines tell each other while drinking. They would start "I swear, this one time…" then everyone would roll his eyes because he had heard the same story many times before. Swofford's stories inevitably ended with him, or some other Marine, looking like a psychopathic deviant. No Marine officer worth his or her pay would tolerate Swofford's insubordination and misconduct. He is the type of Marine, soldier, airman, and or seaman that leadership would move at once to remove before he could "infect" others.

Because of Swofford's view of the Marines, it makes perfect sense Hollywood was scrambling to put his story on the silver screen before the book's publication.

This year marks the 230th year the Marine Corps has been in existence. The Corps' founding, appropriately enough, in a tavern, is the beginning of the lore that surrounds America's Naval Infantry. Marine exploits from the seizing the Bahamas from the British in the Revolutionary War to slugging it out with al-Qaeda and Insurgent forces during the liberation of Fallujah late last year, fill volumes of published material.

However, in a movie industry controlled by people that proclaim they "support the troops," the book green-lit and fast-tracked is the one that disparages those that serve. Swofford claims "Jarhead" is only his story. Other than the parts he made up, he is right. More than that, it is a story of someone who belonged either in the brig or on the mental ward.

The movie itself is a vast improvement over the original material. The time constraints of the movie forced the producers to scrap most of Swofford's life in the Corps. What results is a seldom seen story of the Persian Gulf War. The biggest enemy faced down by the Marines in Jarhead is boredom.

Director Sam Mendes' previous films, the liberal orgy American Beauty and the stylistic Road to Perdition, had the look of an accomplished director. Jarhead at times takes the viewer closer than any CNN embed ever could, and a few times the dichotomy of keeping with the mission and the drudgery of an infantryman's life are as authentic as any image put on the screen.

If you are hoping for an action filled war movie, Jarhead is the opposite. A few rounds of incoming fire and a friendly-fire strafing run by an A-10 are about all you are going to get. To be true to the individual in a war is to show the lack of actual combat. To be true to the honor of those that serve is to see this movie for what it is: seconds of fright surrounded by days (or in this case, months) of waiting. If Jarhead has one downfall it is filming boredom in an entertaining way.

The bureaucracy and the selfishness in the way we fight war are no clearer illustrated than when Swofford, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, finally has an Iraqi in his sights but is told to hold his fire because a major believes he may give away the surprise of a pending air strike. After years of training, months of waiting, finally, he has a chance to do his job, but the major that denies him pulls up a lawn chair to watch the fireworks.

Jamie Foxx (SSGT Sykes) leads the film along with a purpose just as his character leads his unit towards its ultimate goal, which is a plane ride home. The make up of the rest of the cast is complete in the fill-in-the-blanks way many war movies go about casting. You have the redneck, the mentally challenged guy, the philosopher, and the barracks lawyer.

In the end, the real Tony Swofford was able to parlay his experiences into a book and movie earning him more money than many make over a lifetime. Maybe things work out for people like Swofford in that way. About two weeks after my roommate Watters lost his ruck, he was smoking outside our unit's hangar when he saw a PFC walk by with his ruck over his shoulder. I was disappointed at his serendipity. However, you do not have to call yourself Earl to understand Karma. A few months later when we deployed to Turkey, Watters got drunk and slashed the bike tires of the Air Force personnel in the tent next to him. The command promptly demoted him and barred him from reenlisting.

As thousands of Marines fight and die in the Global War on Terror I know now someone in Hollywood could read about Watters and say, "I can see a movie in that story." Meanwhile, the true heroes do their jobs, largely unseen, and largely unappreciated.