Two separate movies

Rating: 5/10 (29 November 2006)

This film was really two separate movies that, like conjoined twins, should never have been joined and should be separated. The first movie was a terrifying expose of American military training and how people are changed by the experience. IT had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It had it's own moral and theme. That movie ended when the gun went off in the bathroom. That's it. End of that story. THEN some other movie started which was a 'slice of life' movie and thus no beginning, no middle, no end. It took place in Vietnam with many of the same characters that appeared in the other movie but was otherwise a meandering mess. An interesting side-note is that Anthony Michael Hall was the first actor hired to play Matt Modine's character Joker but was fired for arguing too much with the director. think about this, while Hall was a very well known comedy actor at the time, his comedy career was already tanking having had several flops and bombing on SNL. This would have been a great chance to segue into more serious acting the way Sean Penn did. At the very least he could have extended his career considerably. Instead, he faded out of the limelight and made the career of a lesser known Matt Modine. Modine came from a similar cinematic history as Hall but lasted much longer. It reminds me of how John Travolta invented Richard Gere's career by turning down the movies that made Gere famous. Or how Montgomery Clift similarly made James Dean's and Marlon Brando's careers.