Is it just me or did "Jarhead" suck?
POSTED BY: Calhoun
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 24, 2006 17:07
VIEWED: 7025
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I love Serenity. And I love Jarhead. But I don't believe the two can be compared. Serenity is a Science Fiction action-oriented film based on characters from a television show with brilliant characterization. Jarhead is based on the memoir of a Marine and is anti-action, that's almost the entire point of the movie. And I thought it captured a lot of the BS about the hurry-up-and-wait and other less-than-glamorous aspects of military service pretty damn accurately. I can also see how someone who favors "serious" movies might prefer it to Serenity. It all depends on what you're looking for.
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Hey everyone. Thought I'd de-lurk for a second and give a grunt's perspective. First of all, my handle predates "Jarhead" by about six years. My units CMO(chief medical officer) gave it to me, and it stuck, basically because he was chief and nobody screws with doc. You just don't do it.
Now to the point of the thread - "Jarhead" does not begin to be compairable to "Serenity." It's also not a war movie so much as it is a non-war movie. It's about the other side of the Corps, the side that most of us end up being on, where you've been reved up, had your brain dicked with to the point of being a borderline sociopath, and then told that you weren't needed after all and to have a nice life. And there'll be a whole different set of mental disorders than the ones everyone talks about to follow shortly.
As for how accurately we(Marines in general, and grunts in particular) are portrayed, the answer is completely. I didn't recognize some of the lingo(specifically "The Suck"), but then my tour was ten years after the events of this film so that could easily have changed. For instance Vietnam and earlier era Marines have no clue what oo-rah(pronounced exactly as it looks, no "H") means unless they've been told by someone younger. So yeah, they nailed us, how we look, talk, act, all of it. Even the Wall of Shame, cuz one of those manages to pop up at every unit.
As to the charge that the film is a rip off of "Full Metal Jacket," I simply can't see how that could be. Jaime Fox's Staff Srgt. Sykes (I think that was his name) is nothing like R.Lee Ermey's Gunny Hartman. We hold up the later as a model for what a a Drill Instructor is supposed to be. Fox's character is NOT an exageration, just someone that we've all served with. He's a good NCO, no more or less.
I’m never serious. Serious means something bad is about to happen.
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I didn't like "Jarhead", the movie, not our fellow board member.
But I don't think it was because of any of the reasons listed above.
It was too soon for "Jarhead". The movie should have been made in 20 years, when we could look at it with some kind of nostalgia, instead of with a sickening pit in our stomach- We're watching our brothers, sisters, classmates and cousins go through it in real life.
Why the hell would we want to watch a movie about it?
To raise awareness? Believe me, Hollywood, we're very much aware of what our soldiers are going through, and we're doing all we can to help them find their places once they come back home. We don't need a movie about it to make us aware of it.
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The movie jarhead wasnt that good, it was one of those movies that was just "there"
"And I think calling him that is an insult to the psychotic lowlife community."
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Jarhead was drastically changed from a true account. I did find the movie entertaining and very humorous, but to let folks see what the other side of the fence looks like is a hard thing to do. To explain it is pretty much an injustice to the actual experience.
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