MUBI

Leave it to Sam Mendes to reduce a visceral set of memoirs of the Persian Gulf War to little more than a montage of music videos. It is compelling enough since Mendes has a good sense of action, keeping things moving forward throughout, but there isn’t much here you haven’t seen before in other movies about the Vietnam War. Scenes become virtually interchangeable with Mendes even showing clips from Apocalypse Now as the jarheads hoot and holler in a movie theater as they watch the fleet of helicopters descend upon the beach to the heavy strains of Flight of the Valkyries. But, this film seems to owe more to Full Metal Jacket, pretty much following the same scenario as we watch a platoon of marines develop from Camp Pendleton to the oil fields of Kuwait, with a number of searing scenes along the way.

The book the movie is based on garnered a great number of glowing reviews, including this one by Mark Bowden for the New York Times. He placed Anthony Swofford’s memoirs among the great war books of the past, including Michael Herr’s Dispatches, which served as the base for both Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. I’m sure Swofford owes a debt to Herr himself in constructing his compelling narrative, but what made the book stand out was Swoff’s ability to capture both the energy and the frustration of Operation Desert Shield and later Desert Storm. In the book, we get a great sense of how this war built over a period of months, which Mendes dutifully reminds us with courier script footnotes. For Mendes, the book is just fodder for a movie. For Swofford it was real, which is why the denouement reads so hollow on film.

Jake Gyllenhaal is good as Swoff. He gives the character a compelling manic intensity. Jamie Fox fills his role well also, but what lends an air of authenticity to the movie are the performances by the other jarheads, who have great fun playing up their roles. Alas, this is a movie more inspired by Vietnam war movies than it is the experiences in the Gulf War, but then maybe you can say that about the Gulf War too.