Foul-mouthed, gruelling snapshot of Vietnam.... intentionally unpretty and bleak (which is, ironically, both its strength and its weakness).

Rating: 7/10 (14 March 2006)

Stanley Kubrick made surprisingly few movies considering that he was credited as a genius film-maker. For example, he allowed seven years to elapse between The Shining and this Vietnam War film. Well-made as it is, Full Metal Jacket is not without certain flaws and is by no means top-drawer Kubrick. However, it is punctuated with incredible moments in spite of its shortcomings, including a gruelling opening-act which details marine training at Parris Island and ends with a hair-raising showdown between a grunt and a gunnery sergeant. Also, the film's bloody climax, with its inconclusive clash between the American forces and an enemy sniper, is simultaneously tense, frightening, ironic and meaningless.
The story (taken from Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers) opens with a bunch of green marine recruits undergoing military training at Parris Island. The drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) is a ruthless, motor-mouthed loony who relentlessly humiliates and desensitises his boys, so that when he has finally stripped them of their humanity he can rebuild them as single-minded killing machines. Among the bunch is happy-go-lucky Private Joker (Matthew Modine), and the vaguely ridiculous (and ridiculed) Private Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio). As the recruits near the end of their gruelling training regime, Pyle finally cracks under the strain and kills the gunnery sergeant, before turning his gun on himself. The action jumps forward to find Joker on a tour of duty in Vietnam. He is by this point a military journalist who has seen some pretty unpleasant sights during his time in 'Nam (and is divided by his experiences - notice his Born To Kill helmet and his Peace buttoned jacket). The platoon he is part of becomes involved in a street battle in the ruins of Hue City near the film's climax, where they find themselves pinned down and picked off by a female Vietcong sniper. Finally, after much panic and bloodshed, darkness falls and the marines retreat into the night singing the Mickey Mouse March.
Where Kubrick really hits his target is in his depiction of the emotional change within Modine's character, and in his cold and cynical (and authentic) view of the dehumanisation that results from being subjected to warfare. Women and children become acceptable targets for the gun-toting soldiers; fear of death gives way to callous indifference; violence becomes normal; horrific deaths and injuries become commonplace to the point of disinterest. No-one in the film can remember the cause they're fighting for or, if they can, they never refer to it. It's just one side versus the other, locked in a costly, savage stalemate, as they enter into violent engagements simply because it's expected of them. The lack of real location work is a problem - Kubrick wouldn't film outside England, so the final gun exchange in Hue City was actually shot in a disused London factory yard, complete with imported palm trees. Also, the film is so detached from compassion (intentionally, I know) that it becomes hard to relate to anyone in the film. While we're supposed to be shocked by the utter indifference with which people are killed or injured during warfare, the total refusal to present a glimmer of feeling or sympathy makes the film's second half as icily distant as it is bloodthirsty. Full Metal Jacket is certainly powerful and potent, but its sheer authenticity makes it a pretty hard watch.