Jarhead

I learned a powerful lesson tonight at Jarhead.

No matter how talented the director is, how good the actors are, how much money you have to spend on production, a movie needs, above all, a script and story.

A topic, a subject, interesting characters, scenery, images; none of these are story, they are simply elements and a movie without a story will never soar.

Jarhead is full of awesome elements: great actors, honest performances, confident directing, wonderful lighting, interesting music but guess what it doesn't have, there is simply no script, no story. There are wonderfully written scenes but scenes do not a script make.

Story is everything and there is no story. I can hear the filmmakers arguing that the lack of story IS the story but I say bullshit.

As a writer who has written plays with no plot I assure you that it is not a good idea and audiences are most often compelled when a real and urgent story is being told.

When an audience is fed only interesting characters, cool scenes, nice dialogue they eventually lose interest and that is what happened tonight at Jarhead in New York City in a packed Imax theatre.

We got bored, restless and eventually disconnected. We kept waiting for the plot to begin and it never did. We kept thinking it was starting but then it would trail off and the move would start again and eventuallly this repititive cycle grew tiring.

War is boring, repetitive, tiring, slow and tedious but great movies are not. I reccomend it for sure for all the wonderful and compelling scenes, a scene with a lost horse covered in oil is one of the saddest images I've seen all year but as a whole it will ultimately dissapoint you.

On a side note: Peter Sarsgard is once again woefully miscast. It makes me fucking angry. He is a talented and intelligent actor and I would never deny that but it's cruel to cast him in roles that he is simply wrong for. He is not a US Marshal (Flight Plan) and he is NOT a US Marine (Jarhead). Seriously, he looks fucking ridiculous in these macho parts. Cast him properly, I'm begging!

Also the trailer for the new Spielberg movie, Munich, was riveting. I hope the movie is, too.

And speaking of trailers, King Kong kicks ass. I love you Peter Jackson. I'll be there opening day!