Son and his friends snuck into the movie "Jarhead" on Thursday night. They bought tickets for "Prime," the comedy with Uma Thurman and Meryl Streep,  which they had no intention of seeing, and went straight into the theater where Jarhead was playing.

Son told me nothing about this plan. I found out when I called the mother of his friend who said that the kids (a group of 5 or 6) were at the theater. She offered to buy them tickets to this R-rated movie but they declined her offer.

Life happens fast when you’re the mom of a teen. I never had a chance to allow or forbid Son’s plan to buy tickets for "Prime" and see "Jarhead" instead. Son knew that he had my
permission to see "Jarhead." In fact, Husband was game to go see it with him.

"Jarhead" sounds like an important film. While it’s not getting great reviews in the press, it seems to be something the kids Son’s age really want to see. I think this is great because the film, sucessfully or not, addresses some of the most serious issues of our day. The fact that the kids want to see it says to me that they are thinking about what is going on in the world. Just 14-years-old now, if the draft is reinstated, Son could be drafted in less than four years. I support any effort he makes to educate himself about the military in this country.

That said, I would not have allowed him to SNEAK into an R-rated movie. It’s the SNEAKING IN part that worried me. Of course, the SNEAKING IN part is what makes it such a classic teen maneuver (who didn’t do stuff like that?).

What does the movie theater do if they find kids in an R-rated movies? Kick them out, report them to the police, call their parents?

I was, however, glad that Son wanted to see "Jarhead" in the first place even if it does contain lots of foul language. According to Son, there practically no violence and only allusions to sex.

To me, it seemed an appropriate film to see on the eve of Veteran’s Day. I haven’t seen the film but I assume that it contains a anti-war sub-text as well as a non-idealized view of the American soldier in the Gulf War.

The film is adapted from Anthony Swofford’s 2003 book, a realer-than-real first-hand account of the Gulf War that shows barely any combat and lots of frustration, angst, longing, and reckoning on the part of the very young soldiers, as they wait for the battle to begin.

A witty, profane, down-in-the-sand account of the war many only know
from CNN, this former sniper’s debut is a worthy addition to the
battlefield memoir genre. There isn’t a bit of heroic posturing as
Swofford describes the sheer terror of being fired upon by Iraqi
troops; the elite special forces warrior freely admits wetting himself
once rockets start exploding around his unit’s encampment. But the
adrenaline of battle is fleeting, and Swofford shows how it’s in the
waiting that soldiers are really made. With blunt language and
bittersweet humor, he vividly recounts the worrying, drinking, joking,
lusting and just plain sitting around that his troop endured while
wondering if they would ever put their deadly skills to use.

The film, directed by Sam Mendez (American Beauty and Road to Perdition) is one of the few movies ever made about the Gulf War. It is a visually stylized  chronicle of what it means to be an American soldier in a desert war. As Village Voice film critic, J. Hoberman writes:

Mainly what these guys do is bear witness, stumbling through a landscape
of incinerated jeeps, charred corpses, and oil wells blazing in the
beyond-Coppola apocalyptic night.

Son thought Jarhead was very, very good. "It’s not anti- or pro-war. It’s about the insanity. These guys go to war to fight for their country, or because they want to go to college. And they go insane waiting to do something," he said.

According to Son, in the film’s most depressing scene, the Peter Sarsgaard and Jake Gyllenhaal characters, both snipers, finally get an assignment to kill someone. But just as they’re about to shoot, a commanding officer shows up and tells them not to do it.  "The planes are coming and they’re all ready," the commander says. The Peter Sasgard character sobs uncontrollably and screams at the commander.

According to Son, "The film is about how the Marines were useless in the war. The Gulf War was fought by planes and not people. But the people were sent to war to do nothing.  And this caused the insanity."