Can a Jarhead Beat Three Kings?
Seattle Post-Intelligencer book critic John Marshall checks in with Anthony Swofford (left) as the film version of his Gulf War memoir, Jarhead, is about to show up at the multiplexes this weekend. It’s the first major film about the war since 1999’s Three Kings, but with a slightly different take on the situation. “I didn’t write an anti-war book and the filmmakers wisely chose not to turn it into an anti-war film,” Swofford, who served in the Marine Corps during the conflict, observes. “What is honesty about war is often perceived as being anti-war. But that’s because most people are not accustomed to the darkness and exhilaration of warfare.” That’s a big disappointment to Ken Tucker, whose New York review bemoans the lack of any message in the film beyond “war seems, on most days, like a brutal joke to the grunts who wage it.” But just because Jarhead isn’t a peacenik lovefest doesn’t mean the marines will necessarily love it, either, at least not the top brass. The Corps refused t
