Their small unit of scout-snipers has been led through training by Staff Sgt. His best friend is his spotter, Troy ( Peter Sarsgaard). She persists, and finally he looks in the camera and says: "I'm 20 years old, and I was dumb enough to sign a contract." He has already given two or three routine answers. At one point, Swofford ( Jake Gyllenhaal) is being interviewed by a network newswoman who asks him why he serves. It is unlike most war movies in that it focuses entirely on the personal experience of a young man caught up in the military process. The movie is based on the best-selling 2003 memoir Jarhead by Anthony Swofford, who served in the first Gulf War.
Let him take the shot to erase for a second the cloud of oil droplets he lives in, the absence of the sun, the horizon lined with the plumes of burning oil wells. His spotter, Troy, goes berserk: "Let him take the shot!" Let him, that is, kill one enemy as his payback for the hell of basic training, the limbo of the desert, the sand and heat, the torture of months of waiting, the sight of a highway traffic jam made of burned vehicles and crisp charred corpses.