The ghosts of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket loom large over Sam Mendes' Jarhead. Those films are so ingrained in our collective subconscious that they've almost become the reference points for how we perceive not just the Vietnam War but war in general. Mendes knows this and his Marines do, too. Before they're shipped out to the Gulf to "kick some Iraqi butt", they watch Coppola's masterwork, juiced up, ready to fight, whooping along to the 'Ride Of The Valkyries' helicopter attack, mouthing every line of dialogue, completely unaware of the movie's anti-war message. It's as close to real combat as most of them will get.

As Mendes explains on his commentary, the first Gulf War marked the beginning of a type of warfare in which the troops on the ground were rendered all but obsolete. Based on former Marine Anthony Swofford's 2003 memoir of his time in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in 1991, Jarhead tells of what happens to a group of men who are trained to go to war but then have that war taken away from them. Men taught to kill, then denied that opportunity. Pumped up at boot camp - in the scenes most reminiscent of Full Metal Jacket - then shipped out to Saudi Arabia, sniper Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), a third-generation Marine-sniper, and his fellow grunts discover that war isn't hell, just boring. While Three Kings revelled in the absurdity of Gulf War One's sticky end, Jarhead trips out on the monotony of being stuck in the blazing desert heat with the Iraqi troops always over the next sand dune, but no one to actually fight. Instead the Marines masturbate over photos of their loved ones and drink water. Mostly, though, they just wait. And go a little bit crazy, with Mendes handling their dislocated mental state ably - helped by a talented ensemble lead by Gyllenhaal, Jamie Foxx as the Marine lifer who heads up Swofford's platoon, and an impressive Peter Sarsgaard as Swofford's friend and mentor Troy.

Mendes reveals he wanted to eschew the rigid formality of his previous American Beauty and Road To Perdition for a more organic approach, using mostly handheld cameras for a simple, brutal immediacy. "I was very concerned stylistically to throw out everything I'd used before, not pre-plan the film, not over-compose the shots, not be painterly about it," he notes. In that regard, he's well served by editor Walter Murch and cinematographer Roger Deakins. Towards the end, as the troops finally leave their camp, the images of war they create linger long after the credits. Be it the highway of death - a desert road littered with burned-out bodies and vehicles - white footprints on singed sand, or the hallucinogenic sight of flaming oil fields burning bright against a black sky, it's a vision of Hell Dante would recognise.

It's an excellent disc, though sadly not a definitive one. That accolade belongs to the Region 1 two-disc Collectors' Edition that includes the behind-the-scenes featurettes Mendes refers to in his smart, Lock, load and wait. Gyllenhaal goes ga-ga in the Gulf... Bored Of War scene-specific commentary. Not that this, in any way, is a vanilla release. His chat-track is full of juicy titbits - they shot the movie chronologically; Gyllenhaal got so into the character as the 20-year-old Swofford that he broke his front teeth during one scene ("I can honestly say that Jake got the shit beaten out of him"); the scorpions in the film are CGI - while a second commentary from Swofford and Vietnam veteran screenwriter William Broyles Jr offers a more personal perspective of war. Nineteen minutes of deleted scenes (not including six minutes of exorcised fantasies) feature an alternate opening, with Sam Rockwell as Swofford's Uncle Walt, that was deemed "too comic".

This is not, Mendes insists, a polemical film against the "current Presidential incumbent" and, on its theatrical release, critics questioned the movie's relevance, going so far as to ask what the point was in making a film about the first Gulf War when the second was ongoing. Indeed, despite the odd dig at Cheney and Bush (Sr), the film suffers from a peculiar emptiness. Often funny where the book is severe and caustic, it's fair to say that if you've read the source material you'll be left unmoved by much of what happens on screen. Still, when a soldier says, "We'll never have to come back to this shithole ever again," towards the end of the movie, the irony is irresistible.

DVD Extras:

Swoff's Fantasies
News interviews
Deleted scenes
Director's commentary
Commentary with screenwriter William Broyles Jr and author Anthony Swofford