Kubrick's weakest movie

Rating: 4/10 (25 November 2005)

If Kubrick has done only masterpieces then this one fails. Here there is no magic touch, no vivid colors, no famous music score, no fancy camera movements in his style. Very little cinema. And the format 1.33:1 doesn't help.
The first part is OK with the training camp. Good psychology. Well done. But that is it. The movie ends. It isn't even spectacular. I don't know what message Kubrick wanted to portray but I think Francis Ford Coppola did a far better job with APOCALYPSE NOW. There is no comparison. Coppola really showed us and gave us an idea of the horrors of war.
Unlike all war movies where the action takes place on a vast territory, here all the war scenes wheel around a small abandoned manufacture. Besides a couple of gun shooting scenes there is nothing spectacular with the soldiers always talking supposedly saying so many profound things but I don't get their point. During the film did Kubrick run out of money?