Truthiness and pewpews of freedom in Jarhead the Second

Cafe Society
1

I loved the first Jarhead movie, directed by the guy who did American Beauty. It was a solemn, tortuous look at the banality of (pre-9/11) deployment. It was pretty different from the run-of-the-mill WW2 glory movies that we had back then and became one of my favorite war movies.

I just watched the sequel, Jarhead 2. If you’ve seen it, what did you think? The basic plot:

Marines on patrol stumble upon a SEAL, the last remnant of his team, who’s escorting an Afghani woman. The SEAL orders them to help him bring her to safety. The Marines treat her suspiciously at first but soon discover that she’s an education activist fighting for women’s rights. They then become converts to her ideals and take turns dying for her, until the end fight where she’s kidnapped and they attack the fortress to bring her back. Most of them die, except the lead character and the woman and a girl marine.

To me this one had far more action but the whole thing played out like a propaganda piece, with little nuance and a lot of over-the-top martyrdom. Every American is good. Every Afghan soldier (the kind we installed) looks suspicious but really has a heart of gold. Every other Afghan is a one-dimensional terrorist who can’t aim, can’t take cover, can’t ever win a fistfight, and is just generally pissed off at everything that is good and beautiful in the world. And the brave activist woman who saw her sister die and has been to hell and back? Constantly cowers and screams like a little girl, so at odds with the must-save-my-country-at-all-odds persona she’s supposed to have.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the film very much as an action flick and a standard hero’s tale, but it seemed like such a far stretch from its infinitely more thoughtful predecessor.

Is this a fair judgment of the second movie? Is there any truthiness to the film at all? I know there were actually brave Afghani women who stood for up education and their rights, but were they ever rescued by a charismatic but inexperienced team of American Marines? Am I just getting more jaded over time?

2

Oh, and I’d guess that activist woman is probably supposed to be a dramaticized version of Malala Yousafzai (who’s actually Pakistani).

3

I saw that this was “On Demand” and read the description… that and your post makes me think my original feeling was right.

This is a sequel to Jarhead, the same way “Troll 2” was a sequel to Troll… meaning not at all related.

4

Cryin’ shame. It’s an alright movie in its own right, but like you said: it’s got fuck-all to do with the original.