"I must defeat my enemy who is trying to kill me"

Rating: 10/10 (1 May 2008)

Full Metal Jacket gets a lot of negative criticism for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that people say that it doesn't do anything with the Vietnam issue that hadn't already been done before. I tend to feel like Kubrick already knew this, and that's probably why the film's plot is so thin that it's barely there at all. It is famously divided into two parts, boot camp and the famous TET Offensive of 1968. It's also true that, especially in things like the battle scenes, there is not a lot happening that is very far from what have become war film clichés, like a lot of guys hugging walls, pinned down under sniper fire.
But Kubrick has one of the most definable styles of any director in the history of the cinema, and in a lot of ways it's true that his style as an auteur doesn't lend itself to the war genre very well. He loves long, slow scenes, accompanied with equally slow dialogue that would sound truly bizarre in real life but makes perfect sense in a Kubrick movie.
Ultimately, Full Metal Jacket is a striking anti-war film, but it doesn't focus on the horrors of war, it focuses on the horrors of what people do to each other and become in order to prepare for war, about the irony of molding men into killing machines for the protection of our right to enjoy something as simple as Mickey Mouse. The movie knows that, even during times of the most intense war, the vast majority of people don't want to fight, they just want to live their lives and feed their families and watch their children grow. Kubrick gives us a tale of the cost of even just having a trained military force.
R. Lee Ermey obviously has the most memorable role in the movie, as the startling drill sergeant who loves nothing more than the Marine Corps except Jesus and the Virgin Mary, even though he has a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush. Much of the fun of the first half of the movie come through his dialogue, as he viciously whips his men into shape, taking special pains to try and make one particular recruit, nicknamed Private Pyle, to quit. The amount of memorable quotes from this movie has to be among the highest from any single movie ever!
Vincent D'Onofrio, by the way, as Private Pyle, is an absolutely astonishing performance. At the beginning of the movie, he is just like a kid misbehaving on the playground. As Sargeant Hartman screams insults and profanity into his face, he can't stop laughing, and for things like stealing and hiding jelly doughnuts he receives punishments like running behind the rest of the men with his pants around his ankles while sucking his thumb. The transition that his character goes through is the most powerful transition in the film, and drives home the film's message in no uncertain terms.
(spoilers) It's interesting to consider that the movie kills off it's two main characters at the mid-point, and unfortunately this is where it loses some of its audience. A Kubrick-style battle sequence is going to be unique in a way that will put some people off, because even though it's the same as so many other battle sequences in a lot of ways, it's also totally different. Kubrick doesn't zoom around the full battle, giving us moments of intense war action, but instead focuses on one small battle, involving a lot of the guys we got to know in the first half of the movie and a single sniper. Aside from allowing for some great moments of tension, it also gives a shocking example of the horrific kind of psychological war that the Vietnamese fought.
What I especially love about the movie is that, like so many of Kubrick's films, it can't be easily categorized. It probably raises more questions than it answers, which lends it its incredible staying power. It is tremendously entertaining, has several powerhouse performances, and shows off Kubrick's mastery of direction. It is stunningly photographed and, while the psychological impact of war may be shown a little heavy-handedly in the last act, it remains one of the best and most important war films ever made.