20 War Movies EVERY Film Fan Should Have Seen
13. Jarhead
A strange and often slow dramedy from American Beauty helmer Sam Mendes, it's odd to report that many actual soldiers claim 2005's Jarhead is the most convincing depiction of a tour overseas that they have seen onscreen.
The films stars a mesmerising young Jake Gyllenhall as a gung-ho young cadet who is eager to see action, only for him to be horrified not by the atrocities of war, but by the boredom of sitting on its sidelines.
In Jarhead war itself is the constantly alluding presence, the thing which our ostensible heroes just missed, and it's the twisted wreckage left behind that they and the audience are forced to sit with instead.