*They just don’t make war movies like they used to. Then again, they don’t make wars like they used to either.”Jarhead,” the new movie from director Sam Mendes (“American Beauty,” “The Road to Perdition”), is a post-post-modern war film in every sense of that word that I’m pretty sure I just made up. It wastes no time falling into “Full Metal Jacket” territory by featuring a cleverly foul-mouthed drill sergeant who screams right into the wide-eyed face of new private Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhall). Later, Swofford and his fellow Marines chant loudly along with Wagner’s thundering symphony “Ride of the Valkyries,” as they unironically cheer on U.S. helicopters in a scene from “Apocalypse Now” that was originally meant to be stinging indictment of the machismo that they are so full of right then. Once the outfit is stationed overseas for Operation Desert Storm, the men eagerly gather around a television to watch a VHS tape of another war-is-hell Vietnam morality tale, “The Deer Hunter.” These nods are part of a self-aware strategy that sets “Jarhead” apart from its predecessors while referencing them as well.Mendes and screenwriter William Broyles, Jr. are out to tell a different kind of war movie. In adapting the best-selling memoir from real-life Marine sniper Swofford, they have succeeded in making the only war-film-as-allegory-for-an-unfinished-sex-act that I’ve ever heard of. From the first obligatory “This is my rifle, there are many like it, but this one is mine” speech to countless mentions of masturbation to Swofford’s final unpulled rifle trigger, “Jarhead” is a lesson in constant buildup and no release.A movie about frustration can itself be frustrating to watch. Since it is designed as a first-person account of one man’s journey from training to almost-combat, it is strange then that we never get a solid grasp on just who Anthony Swofford is. Like most enlistees at first, he admits to being a jarhead in more ways than one. Besides the obvious allusion to the standard military haircut, Swofford informs us that “jarhead” also refers to the “empty vessel” of each Marine; about to be filled with everything the Corps wants them to be and nothing more. Gyllenhall is an appealing screen presence, but the script calls for little more than sucking up each scenario like a sponge and, need I say it again, never letting any of it go.The desert-specific photography by cinematographer Roger Deakins is similar to the white-out look of 1999’s brilliant Gulf War tragicomedy “Three Kings.” The surreal atmosphere of that film is one-upped in more surreal and scary terms in “Jarhead,” as the unit is assigned to dig in near one of the many oil fields set ablaze by departing Iraqi troops. The all-black screen dotted with triangular flashes of yellow is a stark contrast to every other scene in the movie, and it feels much like it must have for the Marines who were actually there-like another planet.If you’re looking for politics, look somewhere else. As Swofford’s friend Troy (Peter Sarsgaard) says, “Fuck politics. It’s all bullshit anyway.” “Jarhead” brings up politically divisive subjects like the U.S. forces’ extensive bombing of retreating Iraqi troops on the Highway of Death, but the only perspective offered is that of Swofford and his troop, as they accidentally stumble upon the charred remains and set up camp. Any political slant to be gleaned by anybody will most likely step in line with their already established ideas. Although I did not see the movie as a veiled recruitment film, one filmgoer at the screening I saw did, echoing the Marines’ call of support- “hoo-rah”-all the way throughout. Ironically, in a roundabout way, it is politics that later keeps Sarsgaard’s angry Troy from being who he wants to be.There’s precious little backroom dealing or strategizing among higher-ups happening in “Jarhead.” Sergeant Siek (Jamie Foxx) is the only omni-present authority figure that appears with any regularity after training, and even he appears charmingly down-to-earth sometimes. The unit’s young crew is in constant struggle with who they are, but not Sykes. Unlike Swofford, he thrives on the charge. In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, the Sergeant explains to him that he could be at home in business with his brother making 20 grand, but he’s serving in the Corps because it’s in his blood.Swofford tells us in voice-overs that he hates being away from home, but since we never see him there, it’s hard to feel a connection to it. He misses his girlfriend, and certainly he misses sex, but other than what he tells us, we don’t really know that much about him. After the long months of deployment and four days of war, he resembles a different kind of empty vessel; the kind we are used to seeing in those Vietnam movies. It’s like he says in the narration at the end of the film:Every war is different. Every war is the same.