Just got back from seeing this movie. It is, in a word, excellent.
All the hype about it being pro-war, anti-war, all things inbetween is a bunch of nonsense. This is a great movie in the spirit of Full Metal Jacket, only nowhere near as vapid. This movie has a point, one that will certainly have an impact on those in uniform or military families.
For a brief background, the movie is set during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the American-led liberation. Part psychological, part heart and guts emotion, part philosophical (existentialist thinker Albert Camus’ The Stranger plays a role as the main character is “caught” reading the book), it’s definitely worth seeing. The Stranger, for those unfamiliar with the book, is a novel centering around a man who murders, yet feels no remorse. While on trial, the jury is less concerned with his crime, but more concerned with the perpetrator’s ability to feel remorse for either the previous death of his mother or the man whom he killed, or more accurately his lack of any visible remorse whatsoever. It’s a good book as far as philosophy goes (Camus is trying to say much more), and one you might want to read if you care to see Jarhead a second time.
The movie reminded me of my father when he got back from Desert Shield/Desert Storm, the letters he sent, even right down to a scorpion (dead and boiled for preservation, of course) which was all very impressive to a 13-year old. I still have old Pepsi and 7up cans in my home office with Arabic on them. My dad had a great habit of sending back stuff, from cans to books going over the Iraqi army, to sand to even some of the swag he was allowed to bring back (uniforms and such).
In short, Jarhead is worth seeing, and The Stranger is worth reading as preparation.