One of the best war ever

Rating: 10/10 (28 May 2006)

No doubt Stanley Kubrick is one of the best directors cinema has ever known. In his life, he made things like "Spartacus", an excellent gladiator, "2001: A Space Odyssey", a wonderful sci-fi film, "Lolita", a sexy and hot romance, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb", an ironical masterpiece, "A Clockwork Orange", a portrait of a possible future and this "Full Metal Jacket", considered by many the best war movie ever made.
The film seems to be two different movies put into one. The first part shows the privates training in an island in the USA. Commanded by a brave, and sometimes cruel, man, the soldiers are often called "maggots" and they have to face really hard exercises. Some of them, like private Pyle, suffer from the pains and difficulties of their duties.
The second part is the war itself in Vietnam. Through the eyes of Private Joker (Matthew Modine), who writes to the press about the situation in the battlefield, we see the war from a very true point of view. We feel like we are there in the platoon and sometimes and have the feeling we are soldiers ourselves.
Highly recommended.