I’ve always tried to review movies for this site in something of a bubble as I believe every film should be taken on their own merits and shouldn’t be affected by what’s going on in the real world. This could encompass anything from real life matters occurring in the world today, to more personal distractions that I may be going through at the time – however, for a myriad of different reasons it seems that I’ve picked the absolute worst time in history to review the third sequel in the overwhelmingly unnecessary Jarhead franchise.
Why I try to keep world politics and personal views mostly out of the equation, watching a film that eagerly teams American and Israeli troops to tackle an Iranian threat in 2026 proved to be as uncomfortable as you’d imagine as real life events conspire to turn Jarhead: Law Of Return into something approaching propaganda.
But even if we try and put the state of the current world to one side and judge the film on its own merits, can the latest bout of Jarhead break the curse of a franchise that just shouldn’t exist? Y’know, I could save you some reading time and just say no…
Israeli’s Rule Of Law is the legal justification for granting Israeli citizenship to a Jewish person from anywhere in the world and a good example of this Major Ronan Jackson who, despite being a US trained F-16 pilot and son of a US senator, flies for the Israeli airforce. Because his mother was Jewish, it means that under Rule Of Law he not only lives in Israel as an immigrant, but is also married there too. If you’re wondering why a film series mostly interested in seeing Marines kick some ass is giving us such an in-depth explanation of an Israeli law, it all starts coming into focus when Jackson is shot down over the Goran Heights and crash lands in enemy territory.
In next to no time, Israeli commandos are primed to be dispatched for a rescue mission, but as Jackson has some rather noticable connections to American politics in the form of his father, the US brass insist that a team of marines are deployed in a joint venture. Leading the rather bewildered team of Jarheads is dedicated soldier Sgt. Dave Flores, who is undergoing the standard amount of self doubt after a previous rescue mission saw the hostage and a fellow soldier bite the big one. But if they’re going to rescue Jackson, they’re going to have to get their skates on because he’s been captured by the Iranian backed Golan Freedom Brigade led by a man known by the fearsome moniker of the Ghost.
Can the marines and the commandos manage to coexist and check their egos in order to see the mission through – and even if they can, can they make it to Jackson in time before the Ghost figures out who his daddy is?
While real-world events will not doubt inform some people’s opinions on the validity of Jarhead: Rule Of Law, there’s also another out-of-movie issue that I had that made sitting through this latest Jarhead a bit of a chore. Over the last year or so, in an attempt to bolster franchise in genres other than horror and sci-fi, I’d been working my way through various military-themed franchises that went from the WWE-funded The Marine, all the way past Behind Enemy Lines and the gargantuan film-count of the Sniper series (11 of the fuckers!) to finally finish up all the wildly questionable films that popped up in the wake of Sam Mendes’ Jarhead. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of pro-military guff that I’ve watched and the cast majority of it has been two-star quality at best and that means that by the time I made it to Rule Of Law, I was fairly sick to the back teeth of jingoistic, modern war films that fail to give you anything to root for in their characters other than they’re a good soldier. On top of that, my views on Jarhead getting a franchise in the first place has been widely stated on this Web page and I genuinely think I don’t have yet another flabbergasted diatribe in me that complains about an anti-war movie getting pro-war sequels.
But with all that being said, even if Jarhead: Rule Of Law managed to overcome all these aspects and the fact that it’s currently politically iffy, it still wouldn’t halt the fact that it’s yet another subpar military film that virtually indistinguishable from all the others. In fact, to prove my point even further, I genuinely thought that the appearance of Ben Cross as a high ranking general was a callback to his character in a previous movie when I realised that that movie was actually Behind Enemy Lines II and he’s playing someone else entirely. Confusing things even more is the presence of prolific direct-to-DVD director, Don Michael Paul, who not only directed Jarhead 2, but also helmed two of the Sniper entries too and the fact that the same names and faces keeping bobbing up just helps give the latest (and hopefully last) Jarhead a distracting form of deja vu.
As expected, original or meaningful characterisation is rather thin on the ground and none of the marines are allowed to portray much other than being a good soldier is paramount and that friendly banter needs to be as one-note and aggressively masculine as humanly possible. Amaury Nolasco, so charismatic in Prison Break, is reduced to a rather glum leading role as he weighs up his duty against a worried daughter while Final Destination’s Devon Sawa gets to show a little more personality (and his abs) as the guy that needs rescuing, but everyone else here is firmly in stereotype mode. Even Ben Cross himself is hardly stretching himself even when spouting such nonsensical lines as “Why do I get the feeling when you say “due respect”, I’m being talked to like I was a cocktail waitress in Hooters?”. Elsewhere, the Iranians are painted as faceless killers, but I’m not sure why that had to go so far to make the hulking bad guy sound like the Kurgan from Highlander, but I’m sure those who judge the quality of an action movie purely by the amount of RPGs fired won’t mind much.
But then, even the action seems to be going stale. I’m not sure how many fields of sunflowers exist in the Middle East, but the ones Jackson finds himself hiding in seems to have mystical, protective qualities when his persuers choose to shoot over them rather than through them. Later, the finale offers up the typical servings of tragic sacrifice, but it’s strangely tough to feel anything when you haven’t been given reason to care about anything that’s occurred up until now. War films that have something profound to say can turn a death into something hugely moving and speak to us about our own, self destructive existence – all Jarhead: Rule Of Law has to say is if soldiers die, their sacrifice is worth it if they collapse in cool, cinematic slow motion.
The confounding, strange Jarhead sequel experiment finally comes to an end in appropriately bland fashion in a way that veers into uncomfortable propaganda more than ever before. But even if the current events of this angry planet didn’t synch up with the plot of this film, Jarhead: Rule Of Law would still be another drab, personality-free, shoot-em-up that’s marched blindly off the assembly line.
Dismissed marines.
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