Jarhead - Willkommen im Dreck

Ein unterhaltsamer und auf eine gewisse Art und Weise auch sehr cooler Kriegsfilm ohne unheimliche Kriegsszenen? Ja! Sam Mendes hat alles im Griff. Er schafft auf eine originelle Art und Weise eine dichte Stimmung der Wüste und dokumentiert ohne Sentiment und Stimmungsschwankungen die Depressionen der Mariner, deren amerikanische Jungenträume nicht in Erfüllung gegangen sind. Sie erleben nur Verluste. Ein bemerkenswert entspannter Film über Dinge, die nicht entspannt sind. (14.01.2006)

Die visuelle Seite ist wunderschön, die Handlung ist aber nicht so berauschend. Im Laufe des Films habe ich mich an viele andere (und bessere) Werke erinnert – von Full Metal Jacket und Wie ich den Krieg gewann über Der Schmale Grat und Ein Haufen toller Hunde bis hin zu Black Hawk Down. Die Geschichte war wieder ein klassisches Erzählen eines grünen Hirns, das auf den Kampf wartet. Zum Glück gab es genug Humor (ach ja – ich wollte noch sagen, dass hier in den Genres "Komödie“ fehlt). Das, was aus Jarhead - Willkommen im Dreck einen überdurchschnittlichen Film macht, ist aber die technische Seite. Der Regisseur Mendes und der Kameramann Deakins haben sich in der Wüste richtig ausgetobt. Man kann fast die Hitze spüren. Ab dem Brand der Erdölbohrungen bis zum Finale ist Jarhead - Willkommen im Dreck eine unglaubliche Augenweide. Der Film hat wirklich überwältigende Aufnahmen. (16.12.2012)

Serious perspectives of war as hell on earth abound throughout cinema. It's a bit harder to find lighter funny satires. Yet is it worthwhile to look at war without a drop of sentimentality and still maintain a sarcastic tone about how "war is an asshole" even when it's boring? Sam Mendes has undergone a genre metamorphosis and instead of family crises, he observes the negative effects of combat conflict on individuals without firing a single shot. Right from the introduction to when they are at the military staging area, which in a way paraphrases Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, through the uncompromising pouring of ideology into the brains of the soldiers, when it is necessary to declare to the public forever how important it is to fight for one's country, to the (non)encounter with the enemy itself. In this case they are not the Iraqi troops, but rather one's own frustration from unreasonable boredom and endless waiting. When Swofford thinks of his girlfriend, the viewer is tempted to go and pat him sympathetically on the back; when he cleans latrines as punishment, we prefer to turn away. And when the sky turns black and oil rain starts falling from the sky, everyone has to realize that things can't get any worse. Then memories of encounters with a lone horse or a column of Humvees wandering through the desert come to mind and we want to praise cameraman Roger Deakins. Finally, any Foxx - Gyllenhaal debate tells us that the current generation of actors has its aces. And I'm beginning to think that going to war wasn't the happiest decision I’ve ever made. (15.04.2006)

I’m thrilled. A slightly different, but no less interesting view of military conflict, which goes the way of depicting the feelings and frustrations that must be experienced by guys trained in elite units only to cover the backs of their colleagues deployed directly in the heat of war. We see their eagerness to fight in the scene where they chant and scream with enthusiasm during a screening of the bombing of a Vietnamese village in Coppola's Apocalypse Now, just as I felt first-hand the frustration of one of the characters at not being able to take part in "it". The impressive scene when, with desperation in his eyes, he begs his superior to shoot at least one soldier, has more power and meaning than half an hour of uninterrupted action. When the protagonist vomits among the charred bodies, the more perceptive viewer will shudder. The apocalyptic image with a horse, greasy with oil all over its body, and the burning oil wells glowing into the darkness in the distance, takes on a kind of mystical beauty thanks to the evocative cinematography. Jake Gyllenhaal continues to grow as an actor and delivers a terrific performance (an Oscar nomination would be fitting), with the reliable Jamie Fox backing him up. Not since Russell's Three Kings has there been such a cool war-themed movie. (02.03.2006)

Join up! Uncle Sam wants you! You’ll have a great time with us, get to do some shooting, kill some non-American bastards, protect your country and three meals a day... Or not? Boredom in the desert or Sam Mendes’ third attempt. And again it’s something completely different from his previous movies. This time he brings us a provocative and raw insight into the life of a young marine during the Gulf War. First he undergoes training and then, keen to fight, he is posted to a war where nothing happens and the action he was dreaming about never comes, and all he does is stand on watch amongst sand dunes, waiting and waiting... And waiting. The movie is more a patchwork of individual scenes (especially the one when the soldiers are watching Apocalypse Now I can’t shake out of my head, like many other scenes too), but despite that, or maybe because of that, the movie is really powerful. And we get good elephant doses of sarcasm and satire. In technical terms it is precise (that’s right, the camerawork is almost unreal; the scene with the horse in the middle of the burning oil fields is the peak of perfection), as is the soundtrack. Every one of the actors is great, as they tend to be in Mendes’ movies. Mendes’ directing is again flawless, inventive and seething with ideas. And Jake “Donnie Darko" Gyllenhaal is a chapter in himself, proving again that he is one of the biggest talents of contemporary transatlantic cinema. This picture of boredom in the middle of a modern military conflict and the impact it leaves on its protagonists is even more interesting and chilling because the movie manages to impart this feeling to the viewer too. (20.02.2006)