By Sean Chavel in Los Angeles

British immigrant Sam Mendes has a three film repertoire: the Academy Award-winning suburban comedy-drama "American Beauty," the period gangster drama "Road to Perdition," and the new Gulf War comedy-drama "Jarhead" which features more revelatory acting and visual milestones. Mendes was in Los Angeles recently before the press to discuss various components of his latest film. The text from the interview has been formatted in a Sam on Sam fashion.

Q: ON CHOOSING "JARHEAD" AS HIS LATEST PROJECT...

SAM: I think what attracted me was the whole idea that you train a whole group of men to go to war, and then you take away the war. What happens to them while they are waiting is what is interesting – it’s really the center of the movie. They turn in on themselves, on each other, they create their own wars. Whether it be a scorpion fight or a game of football with gas masks on. The details of the story from the book is what grabbed me. It was all very unusual. Most war movies are about combat. This is a story of what happens when there is no combat, but they’re trained to kill.

Q: ON HIRING JAKE GYLLENHAAL FOR THE LEAD ROLE...

SAM: I am probably launching a whole series of midnight phone calls to me when an actor wants to play a role, but it does make a huge difference to a director to know that an actor is willing to go the distance. And they are willing to push themselves to the limit. And that’s what happened with Jake. He had let me know how badly he wanted it, and how hard he was willing to work for it.

Q: ON DIRECTING JAKE GYLLENHAAL...

SAM: It was a pleasure to work with him. Apparently I made Jake wait four months to hear from me before I gave him the part. It wasn’t deliberate. I wasn’t being cruel. But I think one of the things that I was worried about is that we all know Jake as soft and puppyish, sensitive and fluffy-haired. But he became a tough young marine. Yes, he was innocent. And yes, he had to be accessible. But he had to be angry, frustrated and difficult… I had never seen Jake do all that before.

Q: ON "JARHEAD"’S VISUAL STYLE...

SAM: For me, the whole movie was a chance to… I threw out everything I used in "American Beauty" or "Road to Perdition." I didn’t use storyboards, I didn’t work in the same composed way, images weren’t picked till I entered every scene and decided then how I was going to shoot it. I wanted to make a movie in a more organic way. In "Road to Perdition," for instance, I was so concerned with style that I wasn’t allowing the actors to express themselves properly. I’d like to think myself as a director that adjusts his style according to the needs of the material. Images are saturated and overexposed, and the later scenes have the surreal quality of a science-fiction movie. But I let my actors create their own way in the film.

Q: ON EDITING "JARHEAD"...

SAM: If anything, the original script had more waiting. I shot more scenes but I took out [material] from the middle of the film. Stuff of hi-jinks and craziness; people spying into the major’s headquarters with the scope of their sniper rifle. Watching MTV through the scope of the sniper rifle. I had some pretty cool scenes, but at the end of the day you can only make an audience wait so long. And then something has to happen. When something does happen, it doesn’t happen the way you think it will.

Q: ON OBJECTIVE STORYTELLING FOR A WAR FILM...

SAM: There are masters of American storytellers who have fought and have more experiences than I have. I think it’s a help, but sometimes it’s a hindrance. It can be a help in a sense that I can remain objective about things as an outsider. It’s a hindrance sometimes because you don’t speak the same language, you know. In this case, I depended on my actors and my military advisors. I surrounded myself around people who knew what they were talking about.

Q: ON MILITARY ADVISORS...

SAM: I have no experiences being a marine or being in combat. I felt though it was my duty to all the people that fought in Desert Storm to get it right. How many times is this conflict going to be put on film? There aren’t going to be many other movies that are specifically about Operation Desert Storm. So I felt it was important to surround with people who fought in the war. A lot of the military advisors who did the movie, were advisors on other Hollywood movies whether it was "The Last Samurai" or "Windtalkers." But all these guys for the first time had become military advisors on a movie about a war in which they actually fought. So they could be very specific on certain things, as minute as how beds were lined up inside marine’s quarters.

Q: ON POLITICAL THEMES IN MOVIES...

SAM: There has been an upsurge of movies that are engaged in current political climate, movies like "The Constant Gardener" to "Good Night and Good Luck. " Then there are the movies that haven’t come out yet. "Syrianna" is a good one coming out later. There are a load of movies this year that are engaged in political discussion on some level. That’s not to say that "Jarhead" is a political film, but I think what’s important is that there is a debate. People’s understanding of what is going on in the Middle East is increased on some level.

Q: ON AUDIENCE EXPECTATIONS...

SAM: Hopefully, the movie is good for you on some level. Movies though are only as good if it entertains you, moves you or grips you. It’s not good for you just because it has a message. If I felt I had an answer, I’d be writing it in a newspaper somewhere. This film is a layered film, it’s non-judgmental, it shows every aspect of the life of being a marine. To me, I feel I’ve made a film that’s left to be considered by the audience.

Q: ON ANTI-WAR FILM VERSUS PRO-WAR FILM...

SAM: ["Jarhead"] can be considered an anti-war film, but it depends on the eye of the beholder. I’d like to see it as a great hymn to the resilience and bravery of the marines, in the face of nothingness. That’s the irony of these things, because there is no perfect anti-war movie. The very things that bleeding heart liberals, like you or I, consider to be anti-war, someone else would look at it as pro-war. Or the glorification of war. And that’s one of the points of Swofford’s book, the paradoxes.

Q: ON HIS REPERTOIRE...

SAM: I’ve ended up doing a trilogy of American films. One of them a suburban comedy, one of them a gangster movie and now a war movie. I think next time I’ll probably take on some kind of global subject or a story that is less specifically American.

"Jarhead" opens in theaters this Friday.