We follow a doe-eyed young Marine named Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) as this bleak, blistering film introduces him to an impersonal grind in which young men suddenly become "maggots."

Everyone in this Marine Corps is treated like an out-of-place Southerner fumbling through Times Square. Even a bored pencil pusher greets Swofford with condescension, apathy and a dozen descriptors that can't be printed here.

Most of us can laugh at this uniform cynicism because we weren't there. It jibes with the hardass reputation that we see in war movies, and thus it's funny in an uncomfortable familiar-yet-distant way.

"Jarhead" is an unusual war movie in other ways, too. It's not about politics, and it's not infatuated with staging elaborate battle scenes. It's about Swofford and other young men like him who labored through the monotony and madness of 1991's short-lived Iraq war and came out the other side wondering what, if anything, had been accomplished.

Based on a memoir by Anthony Swofford, "Jarhead" is a different kind of war movie for a different era of war.

Swofford was deployed as a scout sniper to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for more than six months, most of it spent battling heat and boredom in the desert while political maneuvers were considered thousands of miles away.

Gyllenhaal's character sees the absolute minimum of combat.

Anyone disappointed that "Jarhead" isn't another "Platoon" is missing the point.

The aforementioned humor comes through in macho pranks and aggressive braggadocio, but "Jarhead" is far from slapstick comedy.

Director Sam Mendes ("American Beauty") depicts a dusty, washed out wasteland in which the relentless tension of waiting to attack or be attacked and the slow boil of military-sponsored testosterone overload creates a group of men straddling a line between vigilance and insanity.

The naïve kid Swofford is transformed into an aggressive, reckless killer-in-waiting. Other, less good-hearted Marines embrace the environment as license to explore the depths of humanity.

As "Jarhead" grinds onward - and it does grind a little too long - that early laughter is exposed as a necessary release from the hardness and sadness of the frontlines.

Swofford's narrative contemplates the natures of man and war, but it is most insightful as a critical-yet-loyal account of a military institution that offers a "standard solution" for every complication except the inevitable psychological strain of its Marines.

Swofford says himself that every war is different, and thus the urge to compare circumstances in the first Iraq conflict and today's war will yield imperfect results.

Nonetheless, "Jarhead" is a bold, urgent film launched at a divisive time; it deserves the controversy and discussion that it will inspire.

Daniel Goldberg can be reached at movies@upstatelink.com.