his old friends and afterwards reminisces about the effects of the war. Cast Jake Gyllenhaal as Lance Corporal / Private / Corporal Anthony Swofford Scott MacDonald as Drill Instructor Fitch Peter Sarsgaard as Corporal Alan Troy Jamie Foxx as Staff Sergeant Sykes Lucas Black as Lance Corporal Chris Kruger Brian Geraghty as Private First Class Fergus O'Donnell Jacob Vargas as Private First Class Juan Cortez Laz Alonso as Lance Corporal Ramon Escobar Jocko Sims as Julius Evan Jones as Private First Class Dave Fowler Chris Cooper as Lieutenant Colonel Kazinski Dennis Haysbert as Major Lincoln John Krasinski as Corporal Harrigan Jamie Martz as Foster Rini Bell as Swoff's sister Brianne Davis as Kristina Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire were considered for the role of Anthony Swofford. Critical response On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 61% based on 201 reviews, with an average rating of 6.40/10. The site's consensus states: "This first-person account of the first Gulf War scores with its performances and cinematography but lacks an emotional thrust." Roger Ebert gave the movie three-and-a-half out of four stars, crediting it for its unique portrayal of Gulf War Marines who battled boredom and a sense of isolation rather than enemy combatants. Entertainment Weekly magazine gave the film a "B+" rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote: In his review for the Washington Post, Stephen Hunter praised Jake Gyllenhaal's performance: "What's so good about the movie is Gyllenhaal's refusal to show off; he doesn't seem jealous of the camera's attention when it goes to others and is content, for long stretches, to serve simply as a prism through which other young men can be observed". Sight and Sound magazine's Leslie Felperin wrote, "If nothing else, Jarhead provides some kind of reportage of a war whose consequences we haven't yet begun to understand, a war now elbowed into history by its still-raging sequel". USA Today gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "What we're left with is solid if not exceptional, though it's good to see Mendes expanding as a filmmaker". TIME magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "But the best war movies—and this one, despite its being overlong and repetitive, is among them—hold that men fight (or in this case, are ready to fight) not for causes, but to survive and to help their comrades do the same". However, in his review for The New York Times, A. O. Scott