Movie Reviews

My brother arrived at the movie theatre with a group of his friends this past Friday an hour early to see Jarhead. Unfortunately for him, it was completely sold out an hour before the show. They opted to watched Zorro instead. My brother said that the first one was much better than this sequel and since it clocked in at two and a half hours it was a bit tedious.

After church on Saturday night, I hooked up with my brother to go see Jarhead. I got there with plenty of time to spare and I bought two tickets. Unfortunately, I couldn't go into the theatre to save two seats because I had to wait in the lobby to give my brother his ticket. He wasn't able to get there until ten minutes before the show started and the only seats available in the theatre by that time were in the very first row. Opting to save ourselves the neck pain, we exchanged our tickets for the next showing of Doom instead.

Doom is the latest action movie starring The Rock, of course. It's based on the old video game that we know and love. Y'know, the next best game to come out after Wolfenstein 3D. While the plot of the game may be limited, the plot of the movie served the genre well. Think the Aliens series, with monsters chasing people around dark hallways.

It was pretty much a shoot-em-up fight begining to end but it actually spent a little time developing a couple of key characters. That paid off in the climax with some meaningful duels. The use of The Rock's character was excellent, though Karl Urban was the pivotal character. (Look at his bio, you've seen him before.)

The soldiers in the movie referred to their battles as games and used similar phrases, which was a nice reference to the original source without being cheesy. The game was a first-person shooter, of course, and they used that visual perspective towards the end of the movie at a key time so it fit perfectly. An entire movie in first peson perspective would have made me pull out a BFG myself but this was well done. Overall, this was an excellent movie for this genre, though Aliens is still secure at the top.

Since my brother had failed to watch his chosen movie twice in two days, we went back to the theatre on Sunday night with my dad with more than an hour to spare. This time, we finally managed to catch Jarhead. This movie is based on a book by an ex-marine as he describes his time during Desert Storm in the first Iraqi war. It's critically acclaimed and whatnot but the main reason I wanted to see this movie was because Jamie Foxx was in it. I was blown away by his portrayal of Ray Charles in 2004 and I've been a fan of his ever since. (Hence the reason that movie capped my Top Ten List of 2004.)

This movie was all right but I hardly recommend it to anyone due to it's graphic content. I was expecting some visceral blood a la Three Kings but this was actually a character piece about soldiers not fighting, since that Iraqi war ended so quickly. As soon as you have a movie look at boot camp, you're welcoming a barrage of creative swearing from the sargeants. Swearing in that kind of setting is a rule of English grammar. In retrospect, I should have taken a page from Joel's book and found a specific review beforehand but the point was to hang out with my brother so that part was still good.

As surprising as it was to see that Jarhead sold out every viewing this past weekend at the only screen at Silver City, it actually came in second to Chicken Little, 27 million to 40 million. I look forward to bringing my Little to see that movie sometime soon.