A Raw and Stark Look At War

Rating: 9/10 (13 January 2019)

5 June 2016. Before Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) and its vicarious and explosive war during World War II opening, there was Full Metal Jacket that revealed a glaring look into boot camp and the prolonged isolating and deadly experience of patrol in Vietnam. Stanley Kubrick brings his classic stark look to the war film genre not with action but with storyline and the use of real time to expose the audience to a vicarious experience of war through the eyes of Marines. At times documentary in feel and at other times an artistic expose into the harsh realities of basic training and the frailty of life in real field of battle. As opposed to Saving Private Ryan's big canvass, Kubrick focuses on the more narrow but intimate smaller scope of the personal experience of small battles that are likely to have been more prominent in every soldier's experience.
Full Metal Jacket ranks among the war classics of Platoon (1986), more authentic than Apocalypse Now (1979), less use of exciting action and less personalized presentation of Black Hawk Down (2001), less political satire of that Kubrick directed in his own Dr. Strangelove (1964), Full Metal Jacket introduces a more raw and realistic look at war that an earlier film Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe (1964) or the later films such as We Were Soldiers (2002) or Jarhead (2005).