It’s a strange fact that some movies would benefit hugely if they didn’t find themselves tangled up in the strings that comes with having a number at the end of a title. Take the truly baffling decision to try and turn Sam Mendes 2004, anti-war flick, Jarhead, into a full-blown, action/war franchise despite the fact that the original movie was noticable primarily for the lack of action that was vitally necessary to the story. As a response, we get a film directed by the man who gave us American Beauty, Skyfall and 1917 that suddenly got a follow up crafted by the man who made 2 Sniper sequels, 3 Tremors sequels and Half Past Dead.
But if we try and strip away the fact that the sequels (yes, sequels plural) spectacularly missed the point, is Don Michael Paul’s Jarhead 2 actually that bad? I mean, it’s certainly a direct to DVD title that riddles subtlety full of holes throughout its many action sequences and firefighter, but is it actually unwatchable?
As the war in Afghanistan continues, we focus on a resupply team who’s main task is to drive supplies to various outposts and attempt to unload while usually under fire. However, when their Staff Sergeant catches an RPG and expires due to massive blood loss and a missing leg, the fearsome Major Gavins selects a war weary Chris Merrimette to step up and take his place. But while having a one of their number bumped up the ladder of command gives Merrimette’s fellow Marines cause to joke, the newly promoted Sergeant is certain his latest tour will be his final one as he has a wife an daughter waiting for him back home.
But despite what the first Jarhead had to say about the long, tedious, downtime that comes with this war, Merrimette doesn’t have time to muse on this too much as he and his team have yet another delivery to make. However, on route to their destination toward a remote outpost through Taliban-controlled territory, the group run into a clutch of Navy SEALS who desperately need their help in a misson of utmost importance. It seems that under their protection is Anoosh, an Afghanistan woman who has become famous for her defiance of the Taliban and Fox, the SEAL running the show, acquires Merrimette’s team to aid him keep her safe.
Cue a ton of enemy fire as the Taliban attempt to move heaven and earth to try and kill or capture Anoosh and as the gang of American soldiers slowly start to get whittled down, Merrimette and his tram start questioning their presence in Afghanistan and whether this – or any – mission during this war is worth their lives.
However, mulling over a wartime existential crisis isn’t going to stop those bullets from flying, so Merrimette and his rapidly battle-scarred team have to make peace with some plain truths pretty fast or no one is going to make it home.
I think it’s pretty obvious that at some point I’m going to lambast Jarhead 2 for being tone deaf on a scale that truly beggars belief, so to change things up a little, I’m going to start with the good stuff before I start caterwauling about Hollywood’s gargantuan lack of common sense and I have to admit, while the works of Don Michael Paul and I have had various run-ins before, it seems that Field Of Fire caught me in something of an amicable mood. Yes, much like a lot of Paul’s other, military themed feature films, it’s lacking in real nuance, and laden with repetitive action sequences, but it’s actually made to a surprisingly high standard for an unasked for sequel that directly flies in the face of its predecessor. The copious action, while obviously is one of the film’s most galling blunders, may be overused and ends up being predictable and repetitive, but taken on a purely technically level, actually does the job pretty damn well. Yes, expecting us to cheer when a bad guy gets liquidated by point blank grenade fire probably wasn’t what Mendes was planning when he adapted the memoir of Anthony Swofford, but if you can imagine that Jarhead 2 could actually drop the Jarhead 2 title and simply forge ahead with the “Field Of Fire” subtitle, then it isn’t half bad when trying to achieve it’s simplistic targets.
Another plus point is the cast that features a surprisingly array of familiar faces. Josh Kelly’s rather bland Chris Merrimette and his grumbles about the war in Afghanistan may provide an entry level, wartime lead, but more than making up for it us the presence of a post-Avatar/pre-Don’t Breathe Stephen Lang doing a cheaper rendition of his Miles Quaritch shtick, a typically intense Cole (Pitch Black) Hauser as Fox and the always good value for money Bokeem Woodbine, even if he’s saddled with a tired trope that sees him mistrust Khalid, the native assigned to the team. Still, even though the rest of the cast are separated by the merest of character traits, they handle the action well – but as anyone who saw the original film knows, copious amounts of machine gun fire is kind of a major part of the problem.
While Jarhead 2: Field Of Fire may not miss the point of an original film as erroneously as, say, American Psycho 2 (surely the Mount Everest of all misguided sequels), you do have to shake your head in disbelief that someone watched the original Jarhead and figured that making a follow-up that does the exact opposite was the way to go. In fact, there’s a distinct feel that none of the powers that be have actually seen the film that they were riding the coat tails of such is the huge gulf between them. Not only are they set during completely different conflicts, but the entire raison d’être of Mendes’ original was what the lack of action can do to a soldier’s psyche when they’ve been trained by their government to become a killing machine and then given absolutely no outlet for it. In a bone headed response, not only are we greeted with an engagement with the enemy literally from the word go, but Field Of Fire then goes on to also omit every shred of cruel irony that typified what came before. In its stead we have loads of heavy handed patriotism and plenty of Sturm und Drang as the formally disillusioned Merrimette eventually comes round to putting the mission first. Now, while that’s a perfectly acceptable character arc for a war film (pretty standard, actually), you soon realise that it’s a pretty stupid choice for a film that follows Jake Gyllenhaal virtually spiraling into having a nervous breakdown due to the military machine winding him up and then repeatedly refusing to pull his trigger.
A perfectly respectable – if overly simplistic – modern war movie is instantly rendered cartoonishly silly simply because someone didn’t understand the point of a previous film. However, Jarhead 2 unfairly finds itself at the mercy of how you’re willing to watch it and only manages to justify its strange existence if you’re willing to ignore the fact that the rather unique original was crafted by Oscar worthy talents. Whack another star on if you can mentally remove “Jarhead” from the title, but if you respected Mendes and Gyllenhaal’s work, that’s going to be pretty tough to do.
I mean, did the director of Half Past Dead really think he could do a better job than Sam Mendes?
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