WAR CAN BE HELL, BUT AS PORTRAYED IN `JARHEAD,' IT'S JUST BORING.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

AN ENTERTAINMENT magazine recently put the lead actors of the nonstarting Gulf War movie ``Jarhead'' on its cover, posing the headline question: ``No combat. No politics. And a naked Marine in a Santa Claus hat. What kind of war movie is this?''

Short answer: Not a very good one. Certainly not an engaging one. Director Sam Mendes (``American Beauty,'' ``Road to Perdition'') remains so committed to portraying the Marine experience in Bush Senior's Gulf War as an exercise in beyond-delayed gratification that he fails to deliver an interesting point-of-view or any small measure of satisfaction, much less meaning. Instead, ``Jarhead'' is a fitfully engaging portrait of the boredom of war, a ``Full Metal Jacket'' for Generation Xers who feel cheated by the currents of history.

Based on the episodic memoir of Marine Anthony Swofford, the film details the experiences of a group of Marines who go halfway across the world only to sit in the desert (and sit some more ... and some more), never even firing their rifles. Mendes and screenwriter William Broyles Jr. (``Cast Away'') adamantly refuse to politicize the film or give it any contemporary relevance. (``(Bleep) politics,'' one Marine says. ``We're here. All the rest is bull----.''). That would be forgivable if they had bothered to give us a group of characters who grabbed ahold of the screen.

Lacking that, the film's lack of meaning seems all the more egregious, particularly since even wartime inaction contains large doses of political consequence. ``Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'.'' Or so the song goes. But plenty of smart movies and TV shows (``Seinfeld'' being the obvious king of the genre) have plumbed plenty of meaning from ``nothing'' over the past 15 years. It's a cottage industry that seems to have passed the filmmakers by.

Mendes and Broyles do attempt to capture the absurdities of battle and wartime preparation (which is like shooting fish in a barrel), working (sometimes a bit too obviously) to give ``Jarhead'' the feel of classics like ``Catch-22,'' ``Apocalypse Now'' and, in particular, the middle section of Stanley Kubrick's ``Full Metal Jacket.'' But Mendes' primary commitment (and accomplishment, courtesy of cinematographer Roger Deakins) is in the film's sobering, sand-swept visuals, which often imbue ``Jarhead'' with a sense of horrific beauty that transcends its ambivalence toward story and characterization.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard play the film's main Marines, recruits paired as a sniper team by their gung-ho lifer sergeant (Jamie Foxx). We're given the faintest of background about these characters, and they're only minimally developed through the movie. They're simply part of the Unit, a vast group of Marines deployed to the Middle East who must cope with boredom and frustration (sexual, psychological and otherwise) while waiting for their chance to kill the Enemy.

The soldiers' inertia proves contagious, both to Mendes and, by extension, his audience. ``Every war is different. Every war is the same,'' Gyllenhaal's Marine intones near the end.

The same could be said of war movies, though the things that distinguish ``Jarhead'' don't exactly burn as brightly as those Kuwaiti oil fields.

Glenn Whipp, [phone]

glenn.whipp(at)dailynews.com

JARHEAD - Two and one half stars

(R: language, some violent images, strong sexual content)

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx.

Director: Sam Mendes.

Running time: 2 hr. 2 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: A war movie with no war, just waiting for war. About as interesting as it sounds, largely due to ambivalent presentation and characters who are ciphers.