★★☆☆☆ (maybe I should add half a star to be generous)
Winston Groom wrote a sequel to his bestselling book Forrest Gump, titled Gump & Co., but it looks like that will never be made into a movie. By contrast, Anthony Swofford has written no sequel to Jarhead, which was made into a movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal in 2004, yet there have been two movie sequels already.
My memory of the first Jarhead movie is rather fuzzy. If I recall correctly, it covers all of Swofford’s enlistment in the Marine Corps, as well as can be done in two hours, and he did not re-enlist. There was plenty of combat readiness in that movie but no combat.
The biggest thing that sticks out in my mind about that first movie is the protagonist drinking out of a clear plastic bottle. Makes for a poetic image, but I hope in real life Marines are still using the drab green canteens. So I am not alone in being surprised about these two sequels seeming to be nonstop action.
It occurred to the suits at Universal Studios that Swofford does not own a trademark on the word “jarhead.” Therefore, they can make as many Jarhead movies as they like, though I do hope they give Swofford some kind of fee, however ambivalent he might feel about it.
Jarhead 3 stars Charlie Weber as Corporal Albright, a young Marine whose tour of duty turns out to be radically different from what he expected. And that might be the one and only connection to the first movie.
Just to be sure no one worries this latest movie is going to be more talk than action, the screenwriters make sure to start off with a short prologue with voice-over in which Albright admits he doesn't know anything as bullets fly all around him.
Then the movie backtracks to Albright's arrival at "the Kingdom," one of those Arabic countries, we don’t need to worry which one. Maybe the screenwriters are trying to prevent nitpicking.
We can assume lots of Americans have some familiarity with Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. Choosing a Middle Eastern country besides those could still allow nitpicking, so it’s safer for the writers to not even say what country it is. No one can say “They don’t have those in Qatar” or “We don’t do that in Yemen.”
Though some people are convinced that this movie is indeed supposed to be in Saudi Arabia, a monarchy in which the king has a lot of actual power. Not that I’d do well in a Jeopardy! Middle Eastern countries category, but I’m pretty sure Jordan is also a monarchy. So I’m not going to insist that “the Kingdom” refers or does not refer to a specific real country.
Anyway, Albright is assigned to the embassy detail at the United States embassy in the Kingdom, where his major duty seems to be to act as a human lectern in dress blues for Ambassador Cahill (Stephen Hogan) to read children’s books to Kingdomian children.
It’s a duty other embassy Marines seem to have done without complaining before Albright came along, but it motivates the new guy to go rogue in a training exercise. The scenario is that the ambassador has been kidnapped by some terrorist organization or other.
Albright charges ahead and rescues the pretend-ambassador, but fails to notice a pretend-terrorist in the shadows, who can then pretend-kill the entire unit. Sometimes the most important Marine is the one at the rear. It’s a lesson I think Albright has forgotten by the end of the movie.
In another bout of unappreciated initiative, Albright identifies real terrorist Khaled al-Asiri (Howard Hadrian) casing the compound, and takes this information straight to the ambassador. Albright is not taken seriously because intelligence is certain that al-Asiri died in a recent drone strike.
Trouble is, al-Asiri did somehow survive the drone strike, but didn't have his cellphone with him at the time. Unlike JAG, Jarhead 3 can’t send Trisha Yearwood to analyze drone strike debris to identify human remains and make sure the intended target was in the building.
Also, al-Asiri is looking to retrieve his cellphone, which for some reason is in a safe at the embassy but hasn’t yet been uploaded to CIA computers (yeah, there are some details in the plot that don’t quite make sense, other than to put the protagonist in more dangerous situations).
Pretty soon, the embassy is under siege, bullets are flying everywhere and Kingdomians on both sides of the conflict are having simplistic theological discussions while holding guns.
The ambassador and the terrorist’s brother are in the embassy’s safe room, but Albright and “computer lady” Olivia Winston (Sasha Jackson) must brave bullets to go to a separate building in the embassy compound to retrieve the terrorist’s phone and upload the vital information it contains (I guess terrorists don’t have ways to tell their accomplices to make information obsolete).
“This is just like Benghazi!” the embassy’s ditzy media intern Blake (Dante Basco) exclaims at one point. No, it’s not. John Kerry is Secretary of State and the Republicans don’t look like they're interested in politicizing embassy deaths during his tenure.
One of the Marines tells Albright that a Marine dying in the line of duty is an act of valor, a civilian dying is a national tragedy. Also, Benghazi was a consulate, not an embassy, and Ambassador Stevens was supposed to be there only temporarily.
Dennis Haysbert is wasted as Marine Major Lincoln, the MARSOC commander who doesn’t get to do much besides tell Albright to hold things together until he can get there with his MARSOC unit.
“Jarhead 3 is 13 Hours with less class and more Marines,” declares the review at the War is Boring blog. That reviewer rightly takes issue with how foreign aid is depicted in Jarhead 3. In the movie, foreign aid is literally given under the table, and seems more like protection payments to the local mob.
Jarhead 3 is a fantasy, not a tragedy. The Marines of the embassy are capable and rescue much of the staff — including a mysterious spook named Olivia [Winston]. The morally ambiguous agent makes a special trip to the ambassador’s residence so she can burn a safe full of cash and cover up Washington’s unseemly activities in the region.
Why the coverup? She explains that it’s how they kept the area stable, but she never explains who they were paying. Washington doles out aid to foreign governments all the time. It’s easy to look up how much cash it’s giving. It’s not a scandal.
But if the embassy and the ambassador was paying off local militias, that’s another story. One similar to certain Benghazi conspiracy theories. But Jarhead 3 doesn’t bother to explain. It just shows a character burning money. The scene upsets Albright, the picture’s hero, and that’s supposed to be enough for the audience.
Indeed no one seems to learn anything from the whole siege experience. Albright gets promoted to Staff Sergeant and becomes the Marine embassy detail’s new NCOIC (the gunny died during the siege, and it seems there isn’t supposed to be even one Marine officer in the table of organization), while Agent Winston continues to make under-the-table payments to locals.
Dennis Haysbert appears very prominently on the DVD box and promotional materials for the movie, even though his rôle is so small. I guess it’s just to give this direct-to-DVD production a small sheen of Oscar credibility (Haysbert has been nominated for a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards).
Marines want to see themselves in the movies more. In Operation Hollywood, David Robb mentions that the Marine Corps floated the idea of making Forrest Gump a Marine in exchange for less government interference on the screenplay. I guess it is mainly on that level that the Jarhead movie franchise is of interest to me.
This third installment went straight to DVD a few months ago. If you happen to see it at your local library, I would recommend checking it out. But I wouldn’t recommend actively searching for it. And if I happen to come across Jarhead 2, I will review that here as well.