an unusual take on war

Rating: 8/10 (22 February 2006)

I first saw "Full Metal Jacket" in the summer of 1987, when I was 17 and the name Stanley Kubrick meant little to me. The Parris Island sequence absolutely stunned me, but I felt the Vietnam portion of the movie was a real let-down. I compared it unfavorably with "Platoon," which I had seen perhaps 5-6 months earlier.
In the years since, I have returned to FMJ a number of times and had varying impressions of it. Certainly the boot camp sequence retains its tremendous power; Lee Ermey's portrayal of Drill Instructor Hartman has to be one of the most memorable supporting roles in movie history. Still, I feel the characters in this section are undeveloped. The implication is clear that Pvt. Pyle goes insane after (and presumably because of) the blanket party -- but would that event, traumatic as it was, be enough to turn a seemingly simple, lovable soul into a homicidal maniac? Pyle's transformation is way too neat, too clear -- one minute he's a simpleton who can't do anything right, the next he's the perfect Marine and a deranged killer. If this result could occur so easily, Hartman never would have survived the many years he had obviously spent as a D.I.
I think there is a fundamental structural flaw in building the movie up to a powerful dramatic climax 45 minutes in, then completely abandoning it and starting all over as if the climax had never occurred. Neither Private Pyle nor Sgt. Hartman is ever mentioned again after the movie leaves Parris Island, and Pvt. Joker -- our ostensible protagonist -- shows not the slightest hint of having been affected by the traumatic events he witnessed in boot camp. I was very surprised to learn recently, from Matthew Modine's newly published "Full Metal Jacket Diary," that Kubrick shot the Vietnam portion of the movie (or most of it, anyway) first, and the Parris Island portion second. I think it would have been much wiser to do it the other way around; then the experience of the Parris Island scenes might have informed the performances of Modine and Arliss Howard, the two actors who bridge both sequences. I'm sure Kubrick intended there to be a jarring contrast between the horror at the end of the Parris Island sequence and the careless insouciance of Joker in Vietnam, but still there should have been some hint that what came before had resonated.
Reading Modine's FMJ Diary was a shock because of the intelligence and insight with which it was written -- qualities that do not come through in his performance in this movie. Modine seems to find the wrong note in almost every scene. This is probably the fault of Kubrick, who seemed to seek the off-key and strange from his actors. Is it really plausible that Joker would mouth some John Wayne impression within the first few seconds of Hartman's Parris Island abuse? (The Wayne impressions get very tiresome.) I think Joker is supposed to seem intelligent and wry but he just comes across as a pain in the neck. Why is he so insubordinate to his commanding officer at Stars and Stripes? Why is he so eager to get "in the s***"? His character just doesn't ring true. This is disappointing because several other actors -- Ermey and D'Onofrio, and Adam Baldwin as "Animal Mother" -- give outstanding performances.
The final battle with the sniper is brilliantly staged. Kubrick's daughter (under a stage name) provided a haunting electronic score. Visually the film is impressive, with Kubrick using many long, evocative tracking shots (such as of Hartman pacing up and down in front of his recruits as he screams at them). One particularly remarkable tracking shot -- evidently done by Steadicam -- follows an attacking Marine platoon entering the city of Hue for nearly a full minute. On the other hand, Kubrick uses a dolly in or out only once or twice in the whole movie (even in 1987, when the zoom had become very outdated, he used zoom shots more than dollying in or out). He seems to have loved tracking along with the action, retaining always the same distance and perspective on it, but unlike Spielberg or Hitchcock, he did not have the taste for using the dolly in to focus or dramatize the audience's perspective. (One notable exception is a very slow dolly in on a circular entrance to some kind of ruined temple when Joker and Rafterman first meet the Lusthog squad.) Certainly this is a fascinating, thought-provoking movie. The lack of an engaging central character, however, as well as the return to square one after the high drama at Parris Island, blunts its emotional effect.