Not Kubrick's best

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2011)

Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick's take on the Vietnam War. In this film Kubrick shows the horrors and dehumanizing that war can do to someone. Technically there is two parts of the film, "Boot Camp" and "The War" and I will be reviewing the two of them separately. Boot Camp: What can I say about Boot Camp its pure genius. Stellar direction and lots of witty and dark humor makes this pure Kubrick, just a damn fun time, though as I did like the direction to me it just isn't as artsy like many of his other films like 2001 A Space Odyssey or the Shinning but never the less I still liked it. There's three main characters here, Private Joker played by Matthew Modine, Leonard/Private Pyle played by Vincent D'Onofrio and the best of them all Sgt. Hartman played by Lee Ermey. Lee Ermey is fantastic as the Sgt. Hartman. "Do you feel dizzy? Do you feel faint! Jesus H. Christ! I think you've got a hard-on!" He gives a performance that steals the entire movie. He was actually a Sgt in real life, which explains this. He and Private Pyle are the best part of the film, I just found them to be the most memorable out of all the characters and that they give their best performances in my opinion. Though Hartman is a fantastic (might I mention one of the most memorable and favorite character of all time) of a drill instructor, I might like Private Pyle's performance a little more mostly because of the deep character development. From being this nice normal guy to transforming himself into this killing machine that shows the dehumanization of war. Brilliant character development and I am a sucker for deep character development. The War: Sadly the second part of Full Metal Jacket isn't as good as it was at Boot camp. The movie still has some dark humor and shows more of the horrors of war but it starts slipping into some war clichés and at some points started to get boring. Private Joker has more of a part here but without spoiling anything without Hartman or Pyle here it just wasn't as enjoyable. But what almost made up for this was the sniper scene which I just found out that "The Hurt Locker" kind of copied off of it. This is probably the best part of "The War," One of their guys in the troop is shot down by a sniper and they need to rescue him. They don't know where the sniper is, some of them say they have to move on others want to rescue him and take the sniper down. I liked all the characters each of them showing there own style of their take on war, it created deep suspense then, the movie already showed how war can dehumanize someone and that you can die at any time in war so I didn't know what character would choose to do next. Now the ending of Full Metal Jacket is fantastic. This part really showed how war can dehumanize a man and how they are living in a world of sh*t. This is actually one of my favorite endings of all time, just how horrifying it is, but yet funny. Very dark humor is the name and Kubrick knows how to do that. Full Metal Jacket is a brilliant war movie that isn't as artsy as Kubrick's other films. Sure the movie loses some of its momentum in "The War" part, but the suspenseful sniper scene the horrifying yet funny ending makes up for most of it. Plus with the brilliance of "Boot Camp" Full Metal Jacket may not be Kubrick's best (or like I said artsy) film but I still had a damn fun time with it. This is a war movie that everyone should watch. M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E !