I never hear of it, it's never played on TV, it's not well regarded, there's barely any posts. I think it's Sam Mendes at his best. It's truly a great film, and incredibly well shot.
sharethe war was such a turkey shoot, in essence (though not predicted to be so going in), and the notion that these guys were just crazy to get a shot in on a hapless iraqi commander isn't exactly glorious, leaves us with an ambiguous feeling about the war, and the men who fought it.
being a sniper itself isn't exactly glorious, to me anyway. unless i happened to be sniping at a vastly greater army rather than a vastly lesser one.
i did find the film interesting.
It's boring. Haven't seen since it came out but nothing really happens and in the end he finally gets a chance to shoot someone only for them to call in an A-10.
The end.
That may well be what war is like for many but as a viewer it is just really boring.
After re-watching it, I came away having a net negative view. There were great moments - all the hazing, the playing football in their gas-gear stuff was great (I was a Marine way back, so there is an element of nostalgia for me personally).
What doesn't sit well is that this was, in fact, a 'war' or conflict over in a few days, consisting mainly of hapless Iraqis being incinerated by Western technological over-lordship - the troops on the ground mainly walking over the charred bodies (though not neglecting the fear of previous hazards).
They were dialed-in for some artillery for a bit, so there's that, caught some friendly air-to-ground And that's it. Not a cake walk, but not exactly 1000 yard stare material. I'm pretty sure most troops encountered very little direct opposition.
Putting a. the notion that the Marines had an unquenchable desire 'ta kill', and b. a lot of overwrought borderline psychotic conflict on the dreariness/boredom/discomfort of 5 months in the desert was, I suppose, the project to get across dramatically, but it rang false - to me.
OTOH - everyone who has been combat-adjacent deserves a war movie or two. Jarhead was that for this one.
What I -did- like - the boot camp stuff was totally real, the subtle treatment of dysfunctional families, romantic disappointments, unstable personalities as back-story in a lot of our service people's lives.
Why is this movie so unpopular?
It was kind of a silly movie. Snipers crying because they were denied their head shots, a war that lasted a few days which was basically a turkey shoot of hapless Iraqi conscripts, came out well into our national recognition that Bush had sold us a bill of goods on the whole Iraq dealio.
Nothing about it rang true.
Too boring for most people.
shareI recall liking the book but the film is kind of meh. From memory there isn't a major battle scene or particularly interesting characters. It is probably a realistic enough portrayal of life in a war zone but that doesn't necessarily make for a great film.
The anticlimax of the sniper team finally lining up an enemy in their sights and then having an officer storm in and tell them to not shoot didn't help either. Maybe that really happened but it didn't help given the overall tone of the film.