Gotta agree with unfungames on the fmj allusions, thought I did like the part in the desert when the horse walks up to him.

This movie added almost nothing to my understanding of war or the first Gulf War in particular. If you feel like watching a war movie, there are many better choices available.

i’m a fan of both war movies and jake but this wasn’t as good as i thought it would be, on both accounts.

I like war movies in general, so I tend to review them well even if I don’t think they’re the best ones out there. I did like this movie, and I enjoyed following Gyllenhaal’s character who occasionally does or says things that can’t help but make you emphathize with him. But then there are times when he suddenly goes dark with no real build up to it. I also kept forgetting all of the characters names because they were so rarely referenced.

It’s worth watching if you’re into war movies, but it’s certainly no Oscar winner.

lacks the melodrama of war pics set in earlier eras, but still a pretty good, tense, explodey-cursey-crassy military flick

... and the inclusion of such early 90s swells like Naughty by Nature & Public Enemy was a nice touch …

Just shoot me Jake and then you’ll be a happy soldier and I’ll be a happy victim :P

The first problem I have with this movie is that it attempts to be Full Metal Jacket, which is the greatest movie ever made related to war. The somber narrarating and overall familiar events will make FMJ fans really annoyed.

The second problem I have is the tongue-in-cheek reference to the curreent war in Iraq, where someone says “we killed Saddam, we’re never coming back here.” That is plain and simply the lamest thing since Tim Robbins’ character in War of the Worlds said “occupational armies never win.” I knew at one point there would be a joke made, but the way that it was done was so unrealistically bad. If you’re going to do it then at least have someone say something they’d actually say in the real world. No one would say “we never have to come back here again!”

The only thing the movie does a good job of, and this is simply because it was adapted from a book, is capture a side of war we’ve never seen on film. It shows that war isn’t as exciting as you might think. We follow a couple of characters that are absolutely bored to death. Don’t get me wrong, Full Metal Jacket did the same thing, but there was eventually a good deal of action at the end. We can’t give credit to the filmmakers though, because this is what the book was about (by the way, what a boring book it must have been. I can’t believe anyone actually read it).

This is a movie you should avoid at all costs. It’s one of the worst war movies out there. No one involved with this movie had any idea what they were doing. They just tried to copy past performances and styles that were successful.

A useful film, I think, and one that captures the boredom and frustration of war quite well—fine performances, good soundtrack, visually appealing. It didn’t transcend the genre and become great, at least for me, but it was a very decent movie and I enjoyed it. So there. Plus, Jake Gyllenhaal.