Best War Film In Movie History

Rating: 10/10 (11 June 2009)

Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" is the greatest war film in movie history. The message that "war is Hell" is an easy one to convey, from the sprawling ego-driven mess of "Apocalypse Now" to the morally-tortured soldiers of "Platoon."
But in FMJ Kubrick goes beyond the "war is hell" message... he takes us THROUGH that hell, all the way down... And in summing up the Vietnam War he manages to sum up all wars- America itself as a war machine- and reveals in the film's final battle that we've really been fighting ourselves all along.
The first part of the movie is basic training on Parris Island for the Marine recruits... familiar characters emerge: the hard-as-nails drill instructor, the wiseguy, the screw-up... and we watch the sadistic Sgt. Hartman uses a variety of weapons to recondition the men into bloodthirsty drones, awaiting impatiently the order to kill, which according to the Sgt. is their only mission as soldiers. In a telling piece of dialogue that foreshadows the film's final battle, Sgt. Hartman asks what a famous serial killer and Lee Harvey Oswald have in common.
They were both former Marines.
With that in mind we watch Gomer Pyle, broken by Hartman's unrelenting attacks and physical abuse, confronting his "parents" in the bathroom, or "head." He spares his Mother Pvt. Joker but kills his Father Sgt. Hartman, immediately after Hartman's ominous line: "Didn't your Mother & Father give you enough attention?!?" Then Pvt. Pyle kills himself... or does he?
Pyle is "re-born hard" as Animal Mother in the second half of the film, the suicide being a bad dream or Animal simply a version of Pyle that managed to complete his basic training; Animal is his ghost, his opposite side of the coin. In the Vietnam sequences we get looks at American soldiers performing for "Vietnam: The Movie," and we meet men completely unrecognizable from their non-war personae, looking only to kill and appear macho in front of their fellow soldiers. The mother, or feminine side, to Pvt. Joker prevents him from becoming the same Neanderthal... his helmet may bear the slogan "Born To Kill," but he wears a peace symbol on his vest.
Finally we come to the end battle, a scene as brilliantly illogical as it is revealing. We have never seen the faces of the soldiers the American troops are fighting... they are only shadows, faceless opposites of the Americans... we are fighting ourselves. As the platoon is drawn in and gunned down by sniper fire a strange coincidence emerges: the troops are caught in a triangular plaza being fired on by a lone gunman from a second story building. If it sounds similar to the JFK assassination, it should... this is Kubrick's re-staging of the key American historical event of the 2oth Century. Just as Oswald was himself a Marine, the troops are being fired on by themselves for all intents and purposes. This is where Kubrick's film works on multiple levels and conveys dual narratives seamlessly.
The sniper turns out to be not a Marine but a lone Vietnamese FEMALE, her hair in bows, similar to the style of a Native American. Is this a message on Kubrick's part about ghosts of enemies slain and victims of America's past? She is finally destroyed, in an intimately cruel act by Pvt. Joker himself who, with the firing of one bullet, both rapes and kills the girl, simultaneously killing the "female" side of himself and becoming a true Marine, a true soldier with no identity or independent thought.
The movie ends with the soldiers marching through the burning wreckage of Vietnam, broken men in a ravaged country, singing the theme to "The Mickey Mouse Club," gleefully damned and joined as brothers in arms. Kubrick presents the concept of war as total destruction: of land, culture, life, soul... I wish I had more time to get into my interpretations here. Remember, these are just my impressions... watch the movie and judge for yourself.
"Full Metal Jacket" is a great film because no other before or since has had the courage to declare war as bloody insanity in which "winning" is always impossible. You owe it to yourself to see this.
GRADE: A