Review of Jarhead

A war movie where the characters never shoot their guns, except at the sky in the penultimate scene? You'd think that's crazy, but it works: Jarhead is a war movie, but it's not about fighting. It's about all the other things that make up a war -- logistics, boredom, stress, discipline, terror -- and what happens to you when all those irresistible forces roll over you and lay you flat.

My favorite scene is the one where the soldiers struggle through the desert against a blacked-out sky, the only light thrown by pillars of flame from burning oil wells as liquid crude rains from the sky and turns the world to ink.