Oh! What a boring war

WHEN IS A WAR film not a war film? When it's an existential drama. Jarhead, which is based on marine Anthony Swofford's memoirs of the first Gulf war, is the story of a soldier who went to war and ended up waiting around, getting bored and never firing a shot. The movie, directed by American Beauty's Sam Mendes, plays out like a dumbed-down version of Waiting for Godot in the desert.

Not much happens, and Jarhead drags on, like the soldiers' lives. But that was the intention, says Mendes. 'It's an existential war movie about a group of men who go to fight a war and never actually see any combat,' he says. 'It's about what happens to these men while they wait out there in the desert to be told to do something. The order never comes and they get bored. They just wait.'

But it's not the film's slow pace that has been irritating critics - it's that it lacks guts. Jarhead seems terrified of offending pro-war or anti-war viewers, so it tackles no issue greater than the infidelity of a soldier's wife. The antics of the lonely marines play out in a political vacuum.

And the usually genial Mendes is touchy about it. 'Look, a lot of people have said that it should be more political, but I don't agree,' he says. 'I think this angle is a lot more interesting than me saying that we shouldn't be in Iraq. That's not an interesting subject for a film - you can read it in any newspaper. What's in these men's minds is a much more interesting story.'

Mendes says he consciously avoided making any comment on the second Gulf war in Jarhead because it wasn't relevant. 'Tony's book is about Gulf war one, which happened 15 years ago,' he says. 'People's desire to mine it, to find out what to feel about what's going on now, is a sign of desperation. People in the US are so uninformed by their media. They're always looking for guidance on how to approach the current situation. Well, sorry, but my film isn't meant to do that.'

Jarhead suffers by comparison with the highly political Syriana, which examines US politics in the Middle East in detail. The makers of that movie had the courage to stick their heads above the parapet. But Mendes isn't giving in. Journalists who dismiss his movie as a damp squib have missed the point. He purposely limited the film to the first war.