Stunning.

Rating: 10/10 (30 April 2008)

In my opinion, the best war film ever made, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jackets brilliantly captures the horrors, ferocity, chaos and most essentially the realism of the Vietnam War. What makes it so great is not just the brilliant, quotable dialogue containing some of the best, most insulting lines in film history or the great characters and acting but the direction and mise-en- scene. Kubrick shows what a perfectionist he is by filling his wide angle-frame with every possible detail.The camera hardly remains still, as we pan and track continuously between incident. The scenes are long and interspersed with cross-cutting and sudden bursts of reaction shots. It is what highlights Kubrick as possibly the greatest American director of all-time and his eye for composition and character development is stunning.
10/10