Anything but Hollywood...

Rating: 9/10 (30 March 2003)

In 'Full Metal Jacket', Stanley Kubrick's take on the Vietnam War, no easy answers are given. This isn't a simple tale of men in war - it's a tale of how men become warriors, how they detach themselves from humanity and reality in order to deal with the worst horrors they'll ever see, and how some of them can't make it through that.
Powerfully acted by a group of mostly no-names at the time (though some have gone on to bigger and better things, like Vincent D'Onofrio, Matthew Modine, and R. Lee Ermey), the film starts off in boot camp. There, Drill Sergeant Hartmann (played with great venom and bluster by Ermey) proceeds to dehumanize the recruits and turn them into the proud, killing-machine Marines they need to be. Ermey has all the best lines in the film - most of them unprintable here (check out the quote section) - as he continually berates and belittles the new Marines, all the while shaping their mentalities for the war they'll be shipped off to. Some don't fare as well as others, as Private Pyle (D'Onofrio) has a memorable meltdown as the film bridges from basic training to Vietnam itself.
There, Private Joker (Modine), working as a military journalist, finds himself the center of several nasty and brutal scrapes shortly after the Tet Offensive. The scenes here aren't Hollywood polish - they're gritty, confusing, and seemingly random - just like real war. The climax of the film culminates in a bombed out shell of a city, where the squad has to deal with the threat of a VC sniper and the uncertainty of a broken chain of command.
Kubrick creates a harsh and realistic view of war here, one that wouldn't easily be matched on screen for several years. 'Saving Private Ryan' is a different kind of movie altogether. 'Blackhawk Down' is probably the closest, and owes a lot of its battle-scene staging to this film. Private Joker's continual John Wayne impressions send a clear signal that this is not your standard John Wayne-esque war movie, with clear heroes and clean victories. Vietnam was a messier war, and the single goal of most men sent there was simple: Get out alive.
'Full Metal Jacket' is a very powerful war movie, and probably has a good argument towards being the best Vietnam film ever made.