★★★ Jarhead

[Gino: 3.0 (sp)]

This is the first film I have watched under really subpar conditions: That is, recorded in sub-DVD quality from HBO (which for technical reasons we get for free), then watched on the laptop on the train. And it seems movies on HBO are usually in full-screen versions, unfortunately, unless I have some record setting wrong. So that might effect my reviews of these [which I will mark with a "sp" in my rating meaning sub-par conditions), but the idea is they are films that I am very unlikely to see otherwise, as the Mrs. doesn't want to see them, etc.

This is a Sam Mendes film about a group of marines during the first gulf war and how they deal (or can't deal) with being trained to kill but having no one to kill, basically. I imagine on the big screen in better quality this would have had nice cinematography, made interesting by the stark, washed-out landscapes of what was supposed to be Saudi Arabia. As a war movie, I thought it worked fine, but other than the novelty of having no battle scenes, I didn't really feel like it was anything "special" beyond your standard war movie. For better or worse, it was no Thin Red Line, for example. But performances were good (hell, it had Peter Sarsgaard and Chris Cooper in it), and as I said scenery (or lack thereof) made it interesting.