jarhead...the movie, in spite of occasional concessions to melodrama, never produces much insight into or sympathetic connection with its characters. Mr. Swofford’s memoir, which has a churning, abrasive immediacy, has been subjected to the aloof aestheticism that is Mr. Mendes’s hallmark. The rough language and rough manners have been retained, but the story has been tamed and prettified. While it is not another lacquered, overpriced collectible in the manner of Mr. Mendes’s “American Beauty” and “Road to Perdition,” “Jarhead” is, in the end, similarly empty...

- The New York Times ( requires registration)



...it is the other side of the coin of David O. Russell’s “Three Kings,” also about the Gulf War. If Russell had Catch-22 as his guide, it is instructive that the book Swofford is reading is The Outsider by Camus. The movie captures the tone of Camus’ narrator, who knows what has happened but not why, nor what it means to him, nor why it happens to him...

- Roger Ebert





...Gyllenhaal is the heart and soul of a darkly intense and ferociously funny movie that sets its sights on soldiers under the gun of doing nothing. “It’s the waiting — that’s our life,”...

- The Rolling Stone





...Platoon and Ryan were far superior in highlighting the horrors of war...

- Palo Alto Online





...there’s a central oddity to the movie: The moments add up journalistically, alerting you to things you’ve never seen in a war film before, but they’re strung together in such a calculatedly ‘’artless,'’ objective fashion that we remain fascinated but detached...

- Entertainment weekly