I suppose the military needs to brainwash Marines in order to turn them into killing machines. We’ve seen enough of these films to realise they must not be making this stuff up. So after jacking up a bunch of adolescents into a testosterone fury, our main characters head to the desert and end up not firing a shot.

Right before I saw the movie, Anthony Swofford, the Marine who wrote the book Jarhead was based upon, was being interviewed on the Ryan Tubridy Show. Even more poignant than the horror of war is the reality of returning home after the whole thing is over and Swofford’s monologue suggests that whether holding a woman, or changing a baby’s diaper, his hands will always be imprinted with the muscle memory of holding a gun.