one of the best anti-war films ever

Rating: 9/10 (2 November 2007)

'Full Metal Jacket' is structured like a play in two acts, with little connection between the two parts excepting one of the principal characters. The first part describes the brutal basic training that turns young normal kids, just out of their childhood into killing machines. It's sarcastic, tragical funny, with excellent dialogs, pace and logic. The second part looks more like a war movie, which is kind of a paradox because it's a war movie within an anti-war movie. Arrived in Vietman the young people in the America 60s find themselves immersed within the same world of cruelty and immorality as any of their fellows sent to fight the just or the unjust wars of the past and of the present.
Kubricks building has an internal balance despite the lack of symmetry of the two parts. The first scene is a typical disconnection between the normal life and the army. The last scenes show our heroes trying to exercise the feelings of human solidarity the real life, but facing the absurd and lack of any logic of the war. The common thread is the strong anti-war message, typical to Kubrick not only in this film.