Posted on 11/04/2005 6:51:37 AM PST by dead
AFTER a review of Anthony Swofford's 2003 Desert Storm memoir "Jarhead", one old grunt wrote, "I remember hearing exactly the same stories about Korea and Japan from the NCOs when I went in, and I passed on my own versions of those legends to the replacements who came through Vietnam. Of course, gullible civilians were always fair game."
Apparently not much happened to Swofford when he was in the Marines in the Gulf, and his disappointment is palpable in Jake Gyllenhaal's portrayal in the movie of "Jarhead." Swofford wanted some hard-core guts-and-glory, and if he didn't see some he'd create it in his head. The rest of us who served in Gulf War 1.0 were glad the war turned out as uneventful as it did…
I'm not saying "Jarhead" exaggerates. I'm saying it lies from beginning to end…
There seem to be no officers in Swofford's company, and the only leader around much is a staff sergeant played by Jamie Foxx. Like all of the other characters, he talks exclusively in profane tough-guy movie patois…
The Marines' women back home are portrayed as massively, even belligerently, unfaithful… In "Jarhead," every swinging Richard has been dumped after eight weeks in country. But the war did not instantly transform our girlfriends and wives into sluts. I never heard of anyone being dumped while he was in the Gulf…
Do I quibble over details? Details are all the movie offers. There isn't a story, just Gyllenhaal's shirtless strut and small groups wandering through the pretty vistas, as if this highly mechanized war were fought on foot, like the American Revolution. Toward the end we zip through a Greatest Hits package of what you already knew about the war: the Highway of Death, the burning oil wells. That's it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I'm shocked, just shocked that Hollywood was distort the truth.
I have a friend who goes to a lot of movies. He saw that one and said it wasn't worth the price of a ticket. Pure crap.
Yeah, no kidding. Does anyone have any doubt that Oliver Stone won't rewrite history with his movie about 9/11 too? Making movies and TV shows seems to be the direction that campaign finance reform has pushed us. How long before conservatives get with the program and start making their own film? Mel Gibson can't carry the load by himself.
Come on folks, are we really that surprised that Hollywood would distort the truth? Even my 17 year old daughter knew the movie was a farse from the first she moment she saw the commercials for it.
NOT to mention that the lead actor plays......
A GAY COWBOY in a soon to be release upcoming film!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! complete with kissing and screwing his gay lover while he's cheating on his wife and kids.
absolutely sickening.
(saw it in a trailer when I went to the movies last weekend)
ping
Brokeback Mountain.
I'm pretty hard to offend, but I groaned audibly when I saw that trailer in the theater. The audience around me was also visibly unimpressed.
What freak decided America needs/wants a Gay Cowboy movie?
His sister, who has read some lines a couple of films, was quoted as saying that the attacks of 911 were completely understandable, considering American foreign policy over the last few decades. I would imagine her brother has a similiar world view.
And the director made that worthless maudlin mess of sneering nothing - "American Beauty."
I love it when a group of America-haters get together and make a stinking money-losing bomb.
...The same freaks that decided to inflict "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" on all of us.
And... it all takes place in Wyoming.
I knew just from the previews this movie had every hollyweird war cliche in the book.
I bet there was a guy in a foxhole who kept showing a picture of his wife and kid and talking about what he was going to do when he got home. 3/4 through the movie, he dies in some massively overdramatic way.
NPR always loves a great war movie.
I read "Jarhead" the book and was not impressed. It was, as stated, an antiwar book with no point and no reason in it. I don't think I will be seeing the movie.
I rented it because of all the buzz. It was quite possibly, the worst movie I've seen in the past few years. I hated the hollywood stereotypical tough guy Marine-type. And the movie had him turn out to be gay?! I said, "What the..?" Sure.....that happens all the time. Riiiiigght. Maybe in Hollywood, but not in the real world.
I wish that Hollywood types would talk to a few more *real* soldiers, before they cast/portray/write a military character into a script. Very few ever get it right.
"Generation Kill" is a better book.
Honestly, what do we expect from Hollywood? For them to tell the truth? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHa...that's counter to their Bush Hating, perception manipulting, dumbocrat propoganda ways.
Reviews have been euphoric.
In this case, Hollywood is just following the author's lead. He was one of those marines that give the rest a bad name.
A bad name with libs, of course, I meant.
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