The making of marines

Rating: 9/10 (14 July 2015)

Thirty years after Stanley Kubrick did Paths Of Glory about the futility of World War I Kubrick did Full Metal Jacket about the American experience in Vietnam. The wars were incredibly different and the French were fighting on their own soil, still the frustration of war and the stupidity of the high command make these films markedly similar.
Another Vietnam classic came out around the same time Casualties Of War and that dealt with the army. A very different experience to be sure because the army contained draftees and folks in the National Guard and Army Reserve who LBJ did not call up for Vietnam. Hence it was a haven for those of us not quite ready to give up our young lives. It was sure different from the training these guys were getting on Parris Island. In fact many was a night I comforted myself with the thought about what the marines were like.
Matthew Modine plays the lead here, a fellow who goes through the training and then is assigned as a journalist to Stars And Stripes. He is the voice of screenwriter and novelist Guy Hasford whose book Full Metal Jacket is based.
Today we are in open ended war in the Middle East started to be sure by an attack on our native soil. But we got sidetracked by some old fashioned imperialist objectives in Iraq and now we've got ISIS to contend with. What should our response be? Certainly it has to be a multi-faceted one, it can't all be about dropping bombs on people different from us. It's like we learned nothing from Casualties Of War or Full Metal Jacket.
I think if the film has a weakness it's that the training portion of Full Metal Jacket is better than the combat one. That is because of the performances of R. Lee Ermey as the redneck gunnery sergeant and Vincent D'Onofrio as the poor fat slob of a recruit.
I cannot emphasize too much that D'Onofrio, Modine, and the rest are all volunteers. That being said I'm at a loss to explain why wasn't D'Onofrio just not washed out. Ermey if he was doing his job properly would have. But he was having too much sadistic fun.
That being said when D'Onofrio prepared for the part no doubt he created a back story as to how his character came to Parris Island. I would love to ask D'Onofrio how that came to be.
Full Metal Jacket is an enduring war classic and will be shown right along with Paths Of Glory as long as we have means to entertain and educate ourselves.