Time for some Payback!

Rating: 8/10 (26 August 2010)

***SPOILERS*** One of the best movies ever made about the Vietnam War or any other war for that matter "Full Metal Jacket" shows what not only war but boot camp, in preparing one for war, does to young recruits who are exposed to it.
At Parris Island the new and raw US Marine recruits are put through the ringer by the foul mouth and in your face US Marine drill Sgt. Hartman played by former Marine DI R.Lee Ermey. Brutal and heartless Sgt.Hartman whips the recruits into shape by making them fear as well as hate him far more then those their trained to kill; The Vietcong, or just plain VC, and North Vietnamese regular combat troops. Sgt. Hartman who for some reason never takes off his drill instructor hat, even while asleep, during the entire time he's in the movie really gets to work on the overweight and dumpy Pvt. Pyle, Vincent D'Onofrio, whom he's determined to turn into a US Marine killing machine even if it ends up killing him; That's Pvt.Pyle not Sgt.Hartmen
It's really Pvt. Pyle's good friend and fellow US Marine recruit Pvt. Joker, Matthew Modine, who does the job that Sgt.Hartman failed to do. That's in Pvt. Joker making, by persuading instead of intimidating, Pvt. Pyle into a fearless and murderous US fighting man. But Pvt. Joker soon realizes that he did too good of a job in getting Pvt.Plye into the US Marine killing mode that Sgt.Hartmen tried by failed to get him into! The grueling and dehumanizing training drove the poor young man to completely lose his marbles! And it was Sgt. Hartman, in the marine barracks latrine, who was to find that out soon enough at the receiving end of Pvt. Pyle's M-14 rifle!
The second half of the movie "Full Metal Jacket" is when the real action begins as Pvt. Joker , now a sergeant, is assigned as a US Marine combat reporter for Stars & Strips during the bloodiest fighting of the Vietnam War: The 1968 Tet Offencive. It's during that brutal period that Sgt.Joker is reunited with his fellow marine boot camp buddy Pvt. Cowboy, Arliss Howard, during the battle of Hue in central South Vietnam. It's during the battle of Hue that Sgt.Joker a life long pacifist learns the meaning of kill or be killed. It's in the brutal and bloody assault on a VC sniper nest in a burnt out and abandoned building on the outskirts of Hue that Pvt. Joker sees what war is really all about when he suddenly becomes part of it. Something he'll now have to live with, if in fact he survives the war, for the rest of his life!
***SPOILERS*** Brutally honest film about war and it's effects on those who participate in it "Full Metal Jacket" doesn't at all glorify war and the American fighting man but shows how he becomes the very monster that he's been brainwashed in boot camp to kill: The godless and dirty commie VC & North Vietnamese soldier! In fact the most humane thing to happen in the movie was Sgt. Joker, who was forced by his fellow US Marines, gunning down the Viet Cong woman sniper, Ngoc Le, who by single handedly holding it off had just about decimated his entire US Marine combat unit and killing his good friend and marine buddy Pvt.Cowboy in the process! At first opting to let the fatally injured VC sniper die a slow death, for all the damage she did, the gong ho and blood and guts US Marine Pvt. Animal Mother, Adam Baldwin, for the first time showed his human side in not having to want to put her out of her misery! He wanted her to suffer as much as possible for what she did in killing his fellow US Marines! Animal Mother who didn't think twice in gunning down VC or North Vietnamese soldiers in combat just didn't have it when it came to finishing the helpless and near death VC sniper off! It was up to Pvt. Joker to do the job which in fact the dying sniper was very grateful for in him in doing it!