Jarhead... Kanye's Jesus at it again

I remember seeing this trailer (when I was young and slightly more foolhardy than I am now) and almost 'shitting my breeks' with excitement. The Kanye classic laid over gun fire, explosions and Iraqi controversy was bound to get any movie lovers blood boiling. I had to see this film!

I got all my action loving buddies together and pumped them up for Saving Private Ryan meets Blackhawk Down with an even better soundtrack masterpiece....

To my surprise we got a dig at the US marines and a masturbating Jake Gylennhaal. I honestly spent the entire film waiting for 'Jesus walks' and was so pissed  off when it popped up in the credits, I condemned the film to the Z leagues. I felt like apologising to my dejected looking mates, but pride kicked in. Instead I started regretting not walking after the first hour of no Kanye and no action.

It took a couple of years to forgive the studio but since this blot on my cinematic diary I've watched the film about 10 times. It's bloody brilliant and in hindsight the trailer makes it more so.

Jarhead was the first war film of its kind. It banished the popularised image of a bloodbath with heroic protagonists putting their lives on the line for King and country (or in this case Bush and oil). There were no tear splattered love letters or life long companions dying in your arms. Instead it revealed a more 'truthful realistic' (or at least that was their message) image of war at the time; a load of playful kids, with the same expectations of the battlefield as those who watched the trailer, only to be faced with a mind numbing existence, forced into seeking entertainment via 'seeing what a 40 [calibre] does to a camel's head'. People may have been asking the same questions when they left; 'How did they deal with such hardship? Why on would someone sign up to that shit? Who wrote the soundtrack?' but the answers would be a whole lot different.

Although more impressed than previously, the question still stands as to whether that trailer was an intellectual attempt to engage the viewers' preconceptions or just a suit trying to get the millions of action loving schmucks through the door.