In "Full Metal Jacket," Stanley Kubrick throws terror upon us with a shovel

Rating: 10/10 (18 October 2010)

In terms of an ostensible plot outline, "Full Metal Jacket" appears to be much like any other period piece set in any war. As a matter of fact, the way that director Stanley Kubrick has constructed his story, it almost seems familiar and routine. It starts us with a collection of mug shots as new Marine recruits are shaved and prepared for basic training, takes us through their grueling preparations for war, and leads us into one of the most harrowing denouements of all time, in which many of those faces we saw at the beginning can no longer be found. But it is not the originality of this story that makes "Full Metal Jacket" so great (because it is not original in its plot), it is the sheer harrowing and gut-wrenching plethora of style and nihilism that Kubrick instills into its content.
Right from the beginning, Kubrick alerts us that we are not in for a pleasant experience. Even though he creates images that rival the majesty of his 1968 masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey," this movie does not leave you wrapped in spectacle, but in sheer horror. Watching our cast having their heads shaved with mask-like expressions devoid of happiness hints to us that it'll get worse for them. And it does. The basic training scenes, which consume half the picture with R. Lee Ermey and Vincent D'Onofrio dominating every frame, are grueling and heart-pounding as we watch these young and naive men be transformed into cold-blooded, deranged killers, some of whom are struggling to maintain their humanity, and others who will lose it entirely.
For the back half of the movie, Kubrick almost seems to give us relief at first, by avoiding combat. Then he not only gives us it, but throws it upon us with one of the most shocking third-acts in cinema history. The climax becomes a mixture of three different war movie traditions. Number one, the gungho joy of killing best personified in black-and-white war serials. Number two, the fear of being killed in combat. And three, the traumatizing aftereffects of experiencing the first two. Anybody who does not find the ending of "Full Metal Jacket" haunting should sit down and think about their own morality. Kubrick has haunted us before with the terrors of HAL 9000 in "2001" and the Singin' in the Rain sequences in "A Clockwork Orange." Here, he piles terror on us with shovels.
The movie is crammed with fantastic performances. R. Lee Ermey, once a Marine himself and in fact initially hired only as a consultant, is hands-down visceral and brilliant as the drill sergeant determined to turn his recruits into mechanical killers like their own rifles. Matthew Modine is commendably convincing as the baby-faced Marine who would rather write about Vietnam than experience it. The other two most notable performances are by Adam Baldwin and Vincent D'Onofrio, who are first-class examples of what war and combat do to people.
"Full Metal Jacket" is just as great as any film made about any other war. In the category of the Vietnam War genre, it ranks up with "Apocalypse Now," "Platoon," and "The Deer Hunter" and is probably the second-best of the four. Kubrick may have been telling an ostensibly familiar story, but the way he constructs it and manipulates our responses makes it idiosyncratic and towering above its familiars. It is one of the two best films he ever directed.