The Best Vietnam movie since Platoon!

Rating: 10/10 (30 May 2005)

The film "Platoon" brought out the worst in those who believed in their country, not knowing what actually went on in Vietnam. To quote the character Chris "We were suppose to fight the enemy, but we wounded up fighting each other." As an admirer of Oliver Stone, he liked realism and truth; in Stanley Kubrick's war epic, he shows the insanity, racial bigotry and what goes on in the world of a solider in Vietnam.
The narrator in "Full Metal Jacket" is Joker (Matthew Modine) a recruit, who has been stationed to a boot camp in Paris Island, South Carolina, where things have be turned for the worse. There are three stories in Full Metal Jacket: the boot camp, the actually war, and the sniper.
In the boot camp, we are introduced to Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) who scares off every recruit by calling them slurs, threatening them, nicknaming them based on personalities even punching them. We meet other soldiers other than Joker; we met a man from Texas nicknamed Cowboy (Arliss Howard) and a mental impaired solider named Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onifero) who is nicknamed "Gomer Pyle" by Hartman. I remember the conversation I had with my World History teacher Mr. MacAulay and he explained why they choose Lawrence in the war, told me that the recruits didn't care about records or who were handicapped as long as they got a bunch of young American boys to be dead soldiers.
Throughout the boot camp story, Hartman picks on Pvt. Pyle, as we all know that this kid shouldn't be fighting in the war but get special treatment as throughout the story, he is beaten up after screwing up on so many of the exercise and activities that go on. Later on, Pyle can't take it, as we all know that he is now suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder where his nervous system is about to break down. His anger gives him more strength to be more focus, as the drill sergeant is impressed that he is doing much better than the recruits, which leads Pyle to kill the drill instructor and himself.
Joker has graduated from the boot camp where he is now a journalist at Vietnam getting all the inside stories and the graphic images. In one scene he is questioned about the peace symbol he wears on his helmet and is ordered to get it off before the marines discharge him. Joker sees Cowboy (Howard) now a squad leader, who tells him the crazy stories about the war, even taking a picture of a dead Vietnamese.
Now we move onto the third story, the sniper. After the American soldiers have sex with a Vietnamese prostitute, they receive the wrong map as one by one, a solider is wounded where Cowboy would get shot. Joker and the remaining squad go after the sniper as we see the character change once he shoots the enemy. I feared that Joker will lose his sanity and will be like Lawrence (Pyle) where he turns against his squad. We may never know.
"Full Metal Jacket" is one of the best films of the 80's that should have received more recognition, but "Platoon" did come out first where it showed how American soldiers were unscrupulous, but what makes "FMJ" a better movie is that it shows where insanity starts, at boot camp.