Greatest War Movie Ever Made

Rating: 10/10 (6 April 1999)

I have seen every major war movie since Apocalypse Now, and Full Metal Jacket is my personal favorite one. I was astonished with the portrayal of war's reality in Saving Private Ryan. However, Full Metal Jacket has a more interesting selection of characters in the movie. At one end of the spectrum you have Private Joker, who is humane and soft-spoken. At the other end, you have the action-packed Animal Mother. Both characters were acted out very well by Matthew Modine and Adam Baldwin. The training portion of the film is probably the best part of the film, as the audience gains a new perception of how soldiers have been trained for Vietnam. I for one have never expected the commanding officers to be that cruel, as FMJ's commanding officer was to Leonard Pyle. This film very much deserves to have a larger distribution of videos (they are rare), and needs to be shown on TV more often (in my area it hasn't been on since the 1980's). A film worth its full retail price of $20.