Jarhead is a 2005 film based on U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford's 2003 Gulf War memoir Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles, starring Jake Gyllenhaal as Swofford. The title comes from the slang term used to refer to Marines (sometimes by Marines themselves). The film was directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes, most famous for his 1999 film American Beauty.

Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows "Swoff" (Gyllenhaal), a third-generation enlistee, from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, sporting a sniper's rifle and a hundred-pound ruck on his back through Middle East deserts with no cover from intolerable heat or from Iraqi soldiers, always potentially just over the next horizon. Swoff and his fellow Marines sustain themselves with sardonic humanity and wicked comedy on blazing desert fields in a country they don't understand against an enemy they can't see for a cause they don't fully fathom... Foxx portrays Sergeant Sykes, a Marine lifer who heads up Swofford's scout/sniper platoon, while Sarsgaard is Swoff's friend and mentor, Troy, a die-hard member of STA-their elite Marine Unit. Written by austin4577@aol.com