I was a fan of Jarhead before it hit theaters. Anthony Swofford's book possessed a solid grasp of the modern soldier similar to the work of Colby Buzzell's "My War." The film the book spawned was one that for my money was vastly underrated in general, and a solid announcement of intent of dramatic acting from Jake Gyllenhaal and a solid follow-up to Jamie Foxx' Oscar win. And as the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to the point of being measured in ‘decades,' one would assume that exploration of those themes would be incorporated. I just did not expect a sequel to Jarhead by any means.

Written by Berkeley Anderson and Ellis Black, directed by Don Michael Paul (Half Past Dead), the film looks at a group of Marines in the Afghan theater. Merrimette (Josh Kelly, Transformers: Dark of the Moon) is the cynic and our protagonist, and he is the leader of a unit that is going to an outpost for resupply purposes. He runs into a Special Operations officer named Fox, whom people will recognize as Cole Hauser (Olympus Has Fallen). Fox tells them the mission has changed; they are to go into a far more dangerous part of the country that the Taliban have control over, in order to extract and bring back a citizen and educator who could prove to have value winning over the hearts and minds of the people.

There are a couple of other familiar faces that make you wonder if they were here just to pick a check up. Esai Morales (Caprica) plays a unit captain and Bokeem Woodbine (Riddick) is one of the soldiers in it. Heck, Stephen Lang plays the Major of the unit, fulfilling his trifecta of ‘military leaders who double as antagonists' role, the other two being Avatar and Terra Nova. The focus of the film is Merrimette and his interactions with Fox and the unit. And the unit is…there, I guess. The performances are okay, nothing special.

Not to beat the dead horse, but I could not grasp how much of a leap of faith one is supposed to make from the first Jarhead film to this. The cynicism or arrogance that one saw in Swofford in book or film is flirted with here during a Skype call Merrimette makes to his wife, but not many other resonant moments, if any at all. Nothing notable about wondering what to do with one's self after the war. It relies on being a war story with an occasionally jaded cog in the machine, and not vice versa.

And as far as war stories go, Jarhead 2 is remarkably average. The soldiers try to rescue someone before their imminent demise, there are frayed emotions between some of the soldiers and their local aides/translators, those feelings get smoothed over eventually as if it were a buddy cop movie. Everyone seems to learn a lesson of some sort by the end of Jarhead 2, when it point of fact a lot of times it just does not work out that way. In a vacuum the film, also named Field of Fire, fails in that aspect also.

On its own, Jarhead 2: Field of Fire is markedly average, from concept to performances to script. That it treads upon existing mythology and uses it to its advantage while shredding it in the process is perversely admirable but tragic. If you are going to tout a title, pay a little lip service to it.

Well if this was a straight to video joint one would be hard pressed to find many better looking, similar releases. The AVC encode provides proper color reproduction of the dirt and dust of "Afghanistan" and the greens when they appear look vivid. Image detail is present though not completely consistent through the film with a moment of softness here and there, but you can certainly point out fabric textures in BDUs. While the moments of aliasing, image softness and haloing are noticeable they do not overstay their welcome and overall this is a good presentation from Universal.

The DTS-HD MA lossless 5.1 surround track puts in the work as one would expect for a war movie. The various ambushes have thuds of bullet hits, mortars and the like, remaining active and immersive throughout most. Dialogue is firmly balanced and consistent for the most part, quieter scenes are solid and the war scenes deliver as one would expect them too. Solid work by the filmmakers.

The disc comes with a rated version that runs 1:42:36 and an unrated run that is six seconds shorter. Guessing the unrated one includes more people getting blowed up by rocket propelled grenades and less dialogue, but I could not really tell. Two deleted scenes (1:53) really did not answer the question either.

The sequel to Jarhead is one purely in name as Jarhead 2:Field of Fire uses none of the past motivation and its own story is unremarkable. Technically, it looks good and sounds better, and the lack of extras are a bummer but not a huge issue. Recommended for the junkiest of war film junkies, but honestly you could do better.