4 of 5 paws

Based on the best-selling autobiography of real-life soldier Swofford, I was surprised to find that, unlike the vast majority of war movies out there, Jarhead -- a slang word for the way a Marine's head looks after they get the traditional haircut -- takes more of a psychological stance on war than on how many severed limbs can be fit into a single screenshot.

Many scenes in the movie touch on how each of the soldiers in Swoff's platoon are continually affected by normal things such as hazing, being away from their families and even accidental death.

Plenty of big-name actors abound throughout the film, including Jake Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx and Peter Sarsgaard, of Kinsey and Garden State fame. Foxx's character, Staff Sergeant Sykes, completely enthralled me from the first moment he appeared onscreen. It's impossible to not be in awe of Foxx's command of his role. Why he waited so long to prove to all of us that he is one of the most talented actors in Hollywood today is beyond me. If anyone had any doubts about the guy's acting skills -- even after seeing Ray -- his performance in Jarhead should shut up any of the remaining nay-sayers for some time.

Gyllenhaal moves into the role of Swoff almost too easily and portrays him as a perfectly believable scared and tough kid, who as Swoff says to one of his drill sergeants in the beginning of the movie, "got lost on the way to college."

The relationship between Swoff and his sniper partner Troy (Sarsgaard) becomes a central part to the story and left me wishing that Mendes had developed the Troy character a bit more.

The horrors of war are illustrated perfectly, such as in the chilling scene where all the Marines are watching an old war film while standing in the local military movie theater, cheering as they watch Vietnamese children get cut down by American airplane fire.

Another repulsing scene is when Swoff is reprimanded and forced to clean the latrines, a job that -- after viewing the procedure in this movie -- you could probably not pay me enough to follow through with.

Mendes' filming is another aspect of the movie that brings it to another level compared to its war movie counterparts. Many scenes in Jarhead are very artistically shot, and while there is a lot of graphic war violence, Mendes does a great job of providing lots of tense, unsettling moments with a surprisingly low amount of gore at several key points in the movie.

While some of Jarhead moves a bit slowly, the pace perfectly captures just how many of the soldiers fighting the original war against Iraq did more anticipating and preparing for war than actual killing and the toll that it took on all of their psyches.

With the intensity of Full Metal Jacket and the war sensibility of Platoon, take a trip back to a time when another President Bush declared war on Saddam and check out Jarhead.

Oorah.