Sam Mendes and Jake Gyllenhaal on Jarhead

The director and star talk Marine life, and the difficulty of sticking your neck out when it comes to the current war in Iraq.

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After drawing out the underbelly of US middle class life in American Beauty and showing us the dark side of the American dream in Road To Perdition, it seems as if British director Sam Mendes has a bone to pick with our cousins across the pond. With his latest film Jarhead, he scrapes beneath the States's gung-ho approach to war to reveal a dangerous ennui.

"I like to feel it was deliberate to make a trilogy of American films," says Mendes, "but it wasn't really. I seem to remember after that last movie saying that I was going to make a small English film next and I ended up making a war movie specifically about the US and that's been a great adventure but quite unexpected. The reason is I read this book, 'Jarhead'. On page one, I had no desire to make an American war movie and by the end I did. I've had to go back over it in these interviews and analyse why I made this decision and I think it's because, primarily, I liked the voice of the book so much."

Gulf War vet Anthony Swofford based the book on his experience as a sniper trained to kill, only to be dropped in the middle of a desert with no targets. Jake Gyllenhaal steps into his boots, but despite a compulsory stint of army training, admits he couldn't fully comprehend the Marine mindset.

"What I would say is that, at least on the peripheral, we experienced what a Marine would experience in preparation to become a 'Jarhead'", he explains. "We also experienced a little bit of what it's like to wait to fight and a little bit of action but with exception of the thought of being killed or having to kill someone ourselves, which I think is really what it's all about. So, I don't think we can really know what it feels like at all."

Next page • "I put on the flack jacket and the helmet for the first time and felt all the energy in my body turning inward"