Full Metal Jacket
Composite Score: 83.53
Starring: Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D’Onofrio, Adam Baldwin, Dorian Harewood, Kevyn Major Howard, Arliss Howard, Ed O’Ross, Kieron Jecchinis, Kirk Taylor, and Gary London Mills
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford
Genres: Drama, War, Action
MPAA Rating: R
Box Office: $46.36 million worldwide
Why should you Watch This Film?
Full Metal Jacket is Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Gustav Hasford’s semiautobiographical novel The Short-Timers, about a U.S. marine and his journey to and through Vietnam. The film stars Matthew Modine as Private “Joker”, the film’s central character and narrator who takes the audience through basic training, through the Tet Offensive, and through some personal pictures of the war in Vietnam. Of course, Modine’s character is probably not the most well-known or recognized of the near caricatures in Kubrick’s film; that honor would have to go to either R. Lee Ermey’s iconically foul-mouthed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman or Vincent D’Onofrio’s doomed and simpleminded Private “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence. The film’s memorable cast of characters and its viscerally critical look at both military training and the war in Vietnam have made it one of Kubrick’s best and one of the most acclaimed war movies of all time.
Why shouldn’t you Watch This Film?
I’m not going to sugar-coat this, there’s not a lot about Full Metal Jacket that’s pleasant to watch. If you are somebody who empathizes deeply and easily with characters on-screen, then this is not going to be a walk in the park for you. It gives a very real and damning depiction of how individuals are broken during American military training in order to make them into killers for the country – even those who haven’t necessarily bought in. The scenes in Vietnam are not designed to be anything bordering on pro-U.S. or pro-war sentiment, they are designed to show the horrors of war, and that one in particular. If you come away from Full Metal Jacket with positive feelings about anything, I might suggest having a longer contemplation on just what the film is actually about.
This leads into my second point about issues with the film: I know way too many people who think that the characters in this film are meant to be heroes. I don’t know what it is. (I mean, it’s probably the aggressive amount of patriotism that gets pumped into the American South on a daily basis without any nuance attached, but I’d like to give these people a little bit more benefit of the doubt than that). For whatever reason, though, the film’s characters simply don’t read like satire and caricature to all audiences, which makes this film less than fully effective. On the one hand, you want your social criticism to be veiled enough that it’s still watchable, but on the other, it should be recognizable as criticism to all who watch it. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just American culture in a nutshell right now, and we’ve just gotta be okay with some people not realizing that sign is for them.
So wait, why should you Watch This Film?
I’ve heard great things about last year’s All Quiet on the Western Front as an “anti-war” film, but I’ve gotta say that Full Metal Jacket sets a high standard for anti-military, anti-war, borderline anti-capitalist films. The opening act at boot camp has two of Kubrick’s most memorable characters played against one another – a hapless private who probably should not have signed up to be a marine and the drill sergeant determined to grind the “stupid” and “fat” out of him by any means necessary. The brutal look at the dehumanization process that is military boot camp should be enough to give anyone pause when considering upping their budget yet again. The tragic ending of that arc leads directly into Joker’s time in Vietnam. Opening after he’s been in country some time, the second and third acts of the film give first a sobering view of the American military’s attempted propagandization of Vietnam and then an in-depth look at the impact of combat on soldiers – the ways that they talk themselves into being okay with killing other humans and how they desensitize each other to the violence and death that they face on a daily basis. Not many films paint so perfectly imperfect a picture.
Iconic performances from Ermey and D’Onofrio carry a hard-hitting first act that transitions into the condemning look at the Vietnam war from the perspective of insiders that are the films final two acts, bringing the film together into a cohesive piece that gives a good dressing-down to the American military and earns a spot on the list of Greatest Films of All Time all at once. The film’s visceral nature and its occasional ambiguity for some audience members make watching it an intentional but still important task. It is currently available to rent on most streaming services.
