Ermey gets the job well done

Rating: 9/10 (15 May 2006)

It took seven years to Stanley Kubrick for finding a subject for his next movie after "The Shining" in 1980. He decided to keep on the flowing amount of movies about Vietnam War and directed his own Nam vision, less than a year after "Platoon"'s victorious night at the Academy Awards ceremony.
If you start up with that point, that's not very good news. When a movie like "Platoon" almost sweeps the Oscars, it's hard to believe that another film about the same subject or so will come out in theaters and look as great as the former movie.
Hard to believe, but that happens. At least, a good hour of it. I give the movie 9 stars, but there are two parts in it which are not on the same level.
The first part is by far the best and it would deserve a enthusiastic 10/10. In fact, this is an obligatory part which the other Nam movies forgot to tell about. A group of Marine volunteers enter into the Parris Island instruction camp, and after a quick haircut montage on the air of Johnny Wright's "Hello Vietnam". Right after that comes the meat of the movie.
It's the entrance of GySgt Hartman, masterfully embodied by real-life DI R Lee Ermey. Hartman owns the task of turning the innocent boys into "ministers of death praying for war". The best way to make it is to yell constantly, shouting explicit phrases and beat them physically when necessary.
And Ermey is excellent, and this is an euphemism. Almost entirely ad-libbing his text (a rarity in Kubrick movies), Ermey never repeats himself and he never lifts a doubt about his menacing quotes. "Full Metal Jacket" is about soldiers but is the only one which also focuses on their training and there couldn't have been a better way to portray it.
Ermey's role is already a part of the legend. He could appear in any kind of movie after this one, but this character will live forever in "Full Metal Jacket".
The remaining 'maggots' are many, but we only get to know four of them. There's main character Joker, who is an arrogant and humorous but intelligent soldier. There's also Cowboy from Texas, black Snowball and another legendary character: over-weight Gomer Pyle (a really good performance by Vincent D'Onofrio.
The second part of the movie takes place in Nam but it gets an 8/10. Instead of covering almost-unreachable Vietnamese forests, Kubrick focuses on destroyed villages. This particular setting is not exactly a winner, especially because we all know now that the director didn't want to shoot in Vietnam, result of a fear of flying.
On another point, it's interesting to see the effect of Vietnam War on the soldiers. On this point, "Full Metal Jacket" goes a little bit aside of the others: war doesn't drive soldiers crazy, they already are before they leave American soil. This is perfectly reflected in Pyle's transformation from a maggot to a skilled, almost insane killer. This is the kind of message that puts "Jacket" above the other ones.
Other than Hartman and Gomer Pyle, the only really interesting character of the lot is Joker, played by Matthew Modine. While the two former men are great, they're still two-dimensional. Joker has a much more interesting personality, dominated by his moral ambiguity. He is smart and has a strong sense of morality but he desperately wants to kill somebody. This duality (which even Joker acquiesces) is well shown through his 'Born to Kill' helmet and his peace pin.
After World War I with "Paths of Glory", Cold War with "Dr. Strangelove" and Seven Years War with "Barry Lyndon", Stanley Kubrick shows that he still has a knack for war movies. It doesn't resound as strong as his other war films, but we have to admit that he raises the bar pretty high by himself. That's probably why some critics were left cold somehow. But it's a really good movie.
This movie isn't the strongest Kubrick film of all, but it's another unmissable hit and still is one of the greatest war movies ever made.