your right... i should have said gulf war "era" films. but in a broader sense, hollywood films dealing w/ u.s. presence in muslim lands circa 1990's.
I would say Jarhead is a lot like an episode of Seinfeld. It's basically a war movie about nothing....the tedium of war. Does that make it a bad movie, not in the least. It's actually quite good, well directed and engrossing despite a pretty thin plot (but then that's the point). All the actors put in great performances. I'd say I liked Jamie Fox the best, cause I didn't see Jamie Fox playing a soldier...I saw just a soldier. So his I think was the best performance. Gyllenhaal was good, but not entirely different from some of his other movies. He's a great actor but it would be nice to see him in a different role than the passive, melancholic anti-hero type. The film has a slow pace and just doesn't have too much to work with storywise, but it still keeps you emotionally involved in the characters and their insanity driven boredom. So for a war movie with about 5 seconds or so of action, it's quite good....but I wouldn't want to see it again. Btw, the boot camp scenes are pretty hilarious.
Jarhead came about due to their uniform hats looking like the top of mason jars or their "high and tight" aka "flat top" hair cuts resemble jar lids... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Marine_Corps
