Sam Mendes' "Jarhead" is not a political film. It doesn't take sides on Gulf War I or attempt to use the first conflict to convey a message about our most recent conflict in Iraq. It doesn't critique the policies of President Bush the First or President Bush the Younger, much less the ethics or methodology of war in a modern age. It approaches Operation Desert Storm (and Desert Shield) as an existential conflict where boredom was more dangerous than scuds or bullets. Out of all of this ennui, taken almost entirely from Anthony Swofford's memoir, Mendes is able to deliver only more ambivalence. "Jarhead" is a frustrating piece of craftsmanship, a fantastically made movie on a technical level that leaves viewers with nothing in the end. It's a collection of familiar anecdotes and composite characters without an angle, point-of-view or original theme to hang its hat on.

For Mendes, "Jarhead" marks a continued trend of proficient bloodlessness. In "American Beauty" he used black comedy and satire to cover his characters' lack of human feeling, while "Road to Perdition" replaced emotion with stunning compositions and a graphic novel aesthetic. Despite a first person narration and a compelling central performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, "Jarhead" keeps viewers at arms-length mistaking coldness for objectivity.

Gyllenhaal is Swoff, a third generation military enlistee, a budding sniper who finds himself shipped out to Saudi Arabia after Iraq invades Kuwait in the summer of 1990. With his team of mostly anonymous jarheads -- a reference to both the shape of their shaved heads and their status as empty vessels for the Marine Corps to fill -- he goes to the desert and waits ... and waits ... and waits. Along the way, the Marines worry about their cheating girlfriends, masturbate, hydrate and watch military movies to keep their juices flowing.

In adapting Swofford's book, William Broyles makes the predictable choice to transform the main character into the most familiar of military film archetypes, the man who enlists as a callow innocent and gradually becomes a wild-eyed killer (absent only the killing in this case). By delving into his childhood and family life, Swofford's book offered a viable explanation for the motivations and desires of the guy who can read Camus at one second and turn his gun on a fellow Marine moments later. In the film, Gyllenhaal is pretty much forced to fill in all of the gaps with his performance.

The young actor, breaking out this fall with "Proof," "Jarhead" and "Brokeback Mountain," has physically transformed himself here, casting aside the floppy-haired, doe-eyed man-child persona he's built a career on, in favor of a fierce visage and muscular body that he and Mendes are eager to show off at every turn. Guided by Broyles' simplified character arc, Gyllenhaal traces Swoff's path so well that the look in his eyes is unrecognizable from the first scene to the last. He gets several Oscar showcase moments where he goes native without ever sacrificing the blank-slate sympathy for the character. Even if nothing in the script makes his progression interesting or believable, Gyllenhaal provides the through-line.

Peter Sarsgaard's Troy is the film's other decently defined character, although he's taken on attributes from several figures in Swofford's book. As a man who fears he needs the Marines more than the Corps needs him, Sarsgaard again proves himself a master of the dead stare, a look he's managed to imbue with alternating soulfulness and evil in recent years. He's his generation's John Malkovich. Like Gyllenhaal, he gets his obligatory Oscar moment toward the end, uncorking an emotional outburst that's well performed, but a bit unmotivated in the script.

The cast's former Oscar winners, Chris Cooper and Jamie Foxx, are there for professionalism and little more. Playing a staff sergeant with no attributes beyond his love for the Marines, Foxx never gets to show any kind of spark, comedic or otherwise. Cooper pops up as an officer in two scenes. It's a phoned in performance, but it becomes amusing if you think of his character as an extension of his Col. Frank Fitts from "American Beauty." Lucas Black appears as the only grunt with any feelings about the conflict, which is probably why he's barely given anything to do.

Much of the success of Mendes' first two films came from the late Conrad Hall's precise framing and complex color palates. In his first effort without Hall, Mendes goes to work with Coen Brothers regular Roger Deakins, a fairly lateral move. With Deakins, Mendes is freed, creating stark images with the intimacy and raw immediacy of handheld photography. There's a tendency, though, for those gorgeous shots to be presented as if the filmmaker knows they're gorgeous -- much will be made of the flaming oil fields and the haunting oil-slicked horse, but such moments don't integrate with the film or its aesthetic, they stand out as showy rather than narratively enriching.

There will be a temptation to call "Jarhead" "'American Beauty' Goes to War'" or, by higher minded thinkers, "'Waiting for Godot' with Guns." A major problem is that on both fronts it can only mine territory already covered by David O. Russell's "Three Kings," a film that gains in power and prescience with each passing year. Russell used the frustrating monotony of the first Gulf War as merely a starting point for a comic action romp that managed to make arguments from both sides of the political fence. Mendes is just satisfied with the nothingness, failing to bring a voice or purpose to the material. Why did Mendes choose to make this movie? The only evident answer is that he made it to prove that he could go from satire to comic books to war over three movies, but making a movie to show you could do it isn't enough of a reason, particularly when your subject matter is this life-and-death, this important.