A split personality movie

Rating: Null/10 (31 March 2004)

Those who say this is two movies are right. The first 40 minutes set in the US Marines boot camp amount to an almost perfect short film on the boot camp theme of bastardisation to produce trained killers. The story is perfectly balanced, the three central characters beautifully and economically drawn, the whole thing as clean and as austere as the marine's barracks. The drill sergeant is not a monster, just the hard man the job requires, though we only ever see him on duty. I had to remind myself that anyone serving in the marines has volunteered to be there, so perhaps one should not feel too sorry for the recruits. The sexual element seems to be laid in rather thick - this is one very imaginatively foul-mouthed instructor - but I suppose one way to unite men and give them a sense of purpose is to get them to despise women.
The remaining hour or so, set in Vietnam, during the Tet Offensive in 1968, is rather more problematical. It's three years later and Joker the journalist, far from killing people as he was taught to do in boot camp, is in Da Nang filing reassuring copy for the ultimate house journal, the US Army's Stars and Stripes. He gets sent up country to cover the action with a photographer and is dragged in to action in a patrol commanded by an old friend from boot camp. Here he discovers hellish things do happen in war, even to principled people such as himself.
This second part is a kind of slide into the pit, and rather dismaying to watch. The atmosphere is like `Apocalypse Now' but without the personal journey of Charlie Sheen's character Willard. Kubrick and his set people do a good job re-creating Vietnam in Berkshire, but the limitations are obvious - at times it's like watching a theatrical set. But my biggest beef is that here Stanley K has nothing really new to say. Perhaps he forgot he had already made a definitive war movies 30 years earlier in `Paths of Glory' His mad officers are nothing new and have little impact here. `The Thin Red Line' did a much better job of capturing the dynamics of combat units (in Guadalcanal) and `Apocalyse Now' really stuck the madness of war to the audience. And `Saving Private Ryan', for all its deficiencies, puts the viewer in the front line far more effectively.
As the drill sergeant, Lee Ermey ( a former marine drill sergeant and accomplished actor), gives a flawless performance and Vincent D'Onisforu as the unlucky Pyle is a perfect quivering heap. Matthew Modine is only adequate as Joker though he finishes well.
Perhaps Kubrick was too static a director to make a really convincing action movie, but he has to be given credit for the first 40 minutes, the finest rendering of military bastardisation put on film.