Brief Comments *Slight Spoiler Warning*

Rating: Null/10 (3 November 2002)

This film blew me away. As the other reviews have said, FMJ follows the story of Private Joker from Boot Camp to the war.
I won't talk about the first half of the film as there are already enough reviews talking about it.
The second half of this film is terribly underrated. From an artificial perspective its basically a series of events meant to shock the viewer into understanding the horror of war, but there is a lot more going on.
*Slight Spoiler Warning*
Kubrick sets up a number of really haunting scenes. One of the best examples of this is when one of the marines asks for a photograph to be taken of him and his VC friend. The friend lies pale and dead with a hat over his head. The soldier remarks to the effect: "When the wars over and we've blown all these guys up, their ain't gonna be anyone worth shooting no more".

Another scene that worked really well because of how overt it was. A marine in a helicopter is picking off a bunch of civilians. There is small dialogue exchanged between him and Joker which ends with the marine relaying the old proverb: "War sure is hell, ain't it?". That scene really put forward the whole desentisation/insanity that a lot of the soldiers experienced during a war where the only motivation most of the soldiers had was the propoganda the US government sold them.