Separates itself from many war dramas

Rating: 10/10 (21 January 2003)

In what is probably the greatest war movie ever made, we follow an everyman, Private Joker (Matthew Modine), as he struggles through the torture of late-sixties boot camp, the boredom of life as a combat correspondent in Vietnam, and finally as a fighting soldier during the 1968 Tet Offensive. This gritty, uncompromising drama shocked many for its brutality, most notably Vincent D'Onofrio's performance as an "oat-fed innocent" private slowly transformed to a psychotic sniper with a death wish. R. Lee Ermey's unrelenting drill instructor is flawless and chillingly real, Modine is great as the cynical Joker, as is Adam Baldwin's portrayal of "Animal Mother." Dour and frightening characters all around. "Full Metal Jacket" is definitely the defining war movie because of what it does not attempt to be...cliched heroics and glory speeches (like other war epics "We Were Soldiers" and "The Green Beret"). A must-see for war movie fans, and lovers of poignant gritty drama. Oscar-nominated script by director Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford (who also wrote the novel "The Short-Timers").