A dark, realistic, and gripping tale of war

Rating: 9/10 (21 June 2015)

This film is very dark, but it's dark mood is what sucked me in to this gripping story of the Vietnam War. Although I enjoyed it, I found the film to be very disturbing and creepy, more specifically, the 2nd half of the movie. One thing in particular is the scene near the end of the film where the US soldiers shoot the Vietnamese sniper, and the sniper, who is suffering in pain, tells the soldiers to shoot her. This among many other things makes this movie dark and disturbing, and there were probably worse things that happened in Vietnam during the war.
Even though "Full Metal Jacket" is dark, it shows people the horror's of war, just like the films "Platoon" and "Saving Private Ryan" have done. But not all of this movie is graphic war. The 1st half of this movie is a look into the hard training of US soldiers on Parris Island, which is a lot less graphic than war. R. Lee Ermey's performance as Drill Sergeant Hartman is amazing, realistic, and Oscar worthy as it makes the 1st half of the movie a lot more interesting.
However, the first half is still disturbing as it shows the tough boot camp that soldiers had to deal with on Parris Island. The treatment of Private Pyle is one sad thing in this movie. Private Pyle is an example of a person broken in training as he was emotionally abused by Hartman for his mistakes and was beaten by his fellow cadets due to his mistakes causing the others to suffer. Pyle would eventually go crazy and kill Hartman and then himself,
"Full Metal Jacket" is an amazing film that benefits from it dark and realistic tone of war, it's amazing performances, Kubrick's directing, and it's camera angles that make it look like I'm playing a first person shooter or I'm on the battlefield.