IF I DOZE IN A COMBAT ZONE

REVIEWED - JARHEADIN THE summer of 1990, Anthony Swofford, a 20-year-old Californian, was among the first wave of US marines sent to the deserts of Saudi Arabia to prepare for the Gulf War. Swofford recounted his experiences in a 2003 book, which the New York Times described as "some kind of classic" and a memoir "that will go down with the best books ever written on military life".

Something significant has gone missing in Jarhead's transition to the screen, as the film falls far short of classic status and is all too familiar in its depiction of military life. It is most persuasive in capturing the relentless boredom of Swofford and his fellow recruits as they repeat their humdrum daily routine for weeks on end while waiting for the war to start. Unfortunately, repetition and boredom do not make for arresting cinema.

Jarhead is the third movie from Sam Mendes, the gifted English theatre director who collected an Oscar for American Beauty and followed it with the stylish period thriller Road to Perdition. Whatever attracted Mendes to filming Jarhead is not clear beyond, perhaps, an ambition to stretch himself across the genres with the skill and versatility of Ang Lee - an unavoidable comparison, given that Jarhead arrives here a week after Lee's vastly superior Brokeback Mountain and that both films star the engaging Jake Gyllenhaal.

There are some entertaining sequences, as when the marines, nervously wired for war, sing along with The Ride of the Valkyries and cheer at every explosion while they are watching Apocalypse Now. And there are some briefly touching scenes related to the lives and loves the young men left behind in the US.

Mendes mixes in the craziness of Catch-22 and the cynicism of Three Kings without being anywhere as effective as either of those movies. He charts the training, discipline and tedium of the soldiers without offering anything that wasn't stated more powerfully in Full Metal Jacket.

Jamie Foxx is saddled with the most cliche-ridden role: the loud, foul-mouthed drill sergeant who humiliates his young charges with tiresome predictability in a movie which, imdb.com helpfully points out, makes 278 uses of the F-word and its variants.