Must own for war movie fans

Rating: 9/10 (28 January 2017)

This movie could be classified as two short movies with reoccurring characters, but this is not detrimental to the movie as it shows the stages that the soldiers go through from raw recruits, to new arrivals to battle hardened veterans. The first part of this movie thanks to R Lee Ermey's, whose performance was phenomenal, real life experience as a drill sergeant made it really authentic and believable as the recruits went through their basic training, the fact that Kubrick let Ermey improvise his lines is an indication of how strong his performance was. The rest of the cast didn't need to act as if they were terrified of him as the genuinely were. In the second half, the movie focuses on Matthew Modine's Private Joker's time in Vietnam who observes the dehumanising effect of the war on both himself and fellow recruits, amid the carnage and bloodshed, when he sees first hand the war for the hell it really is. Now in comparing it with Platoon, as I've said in my review of that movie, you can't really compare it with this as they depict two very different aspects of the war. That movie depicts the war in jungle, whereas this movie, especially part two portray the urban warfare of the Tet Offensive, particularly the bitter bloody street fighting in Hue, which the Americans had to deal with the enemies underhanded tactics such as snipers and booby traps, and as a result has been described by some historians as the Stalingrad of the Vietnam war. In summary this movie is an authentic depiction of what raw recruits went through in the Vietnam war, and how they had to adapt to the hellish conditions which they fought, a must own for all war movie lovers.