Grade: A | Genre: Drama/Dark Humor
Summary: Just as he did with American Beauty, Director Sam Mendes finds humor within the human drama and takes Jarhead beyond the realms of the conventional war flick. Its boldness defines its brilliance and effectively displays a war of the human psyche rather than that on the battlefront.

"Welcome to the Suck." Based on Former Marine Anthony "Swoff" Swofford's best selling memoir about his experiences spent in Desert Shield, Jarhead is a wide-eyed look at what the anticipation of war can do to a group of young soldiers desperate to defend their country with the hopes of returning home as national heroes. What they never expected was that the reality of war in the Middle East would prove to be personal wars within themselves.

Jarhead is not your traditional war hero film. There are no real battle scenes and hardly a glimpse of the enemy. At the end of the day, these boys don't even get to fire guns with which they've been trained to kill. It's not about finding glory on the battle field but about how they spent their time preparing themselves for the worst when the worst isn't given time to even show itself.