First half much better than second

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2019)

I've read that Lee Ermy's sergeant in this movie is not an exaggeration from how many sergeants have acted towards their recruits during basic training, the only difference is now sergeants are no longer allowed to put their hands on the trainees. However, all the verbal action and style in how they push them through training is spot on.
Ermy, as Sergeant Gunnery, has the hapless Private Pyle as his favorite target due to his overweight, lazy, slacker yet smug attitude he had, well he started out smug before Gunnery broke his spirit. And he made sure to keep any of Pyle's laziness, his wiseacre tendencies, and his spirit away for good if he could help it. Much of the first half of the film is centered around the basic training and Ermy's constant belittling and bullying Pyle.
In the real life military basic training, most trainees like Pyle would've been discharged or dropped out before Pyle went anywhere. Ermy seemed to have had a special need for keeping him there as his punching bag. However, it could also be argued that maybe also he felt underneath that through enough pushing, he could eventually have made a real soldier out of Pyle. He was wrong about that, with the top climatic showdown of the movie (which was not near the end like in most movies) between Gunnery and Pyle, along with his famous "what's yer major malfunction!!!?", and the surprise (well, the surprise for someone not like me who seen this movie many times).
Other great moments during training including Pyle's reprocussions for sneaking in a donut (and the other recruits with the socks full of metal locks), the obstacle courses (particularly with Pyle's struggling through them), and the always tense introduction of the recruits with the Sergeant when standing down (along with the line copied from "Officer and a gentleman", "Only steers and q****s come from Texas!! I don't see no horns!!").
All above being the first half of the movie which was much better than the second. The second part took place in Vietnam, minus the two biggest characters from the first half, and was basically just another cutout copy of films on troops in Vietnam. And, there have really been better movies about troops fighting in Vietnam such as "Platoon", "Good morning Vietnam", and even in "Forrest Gump".
Arlis Howard was one of the main characters in the Vietnam section, who I remember from "Plain clothes" where he played an undercover cop posing as a highschool student to help solve a murder of one of the teachers. And there was that talked about prosritute scene in the Vietnam part which I didn't find that great. I honestly have on several occasions only watched this movie to see the basic training half, and have only seen the movie all the way through about half the times I've seen it.