Fool Mental Jackrabbit

Rating: 4/10 (23 June 2010)

Since i am quite young, and consequently new to the domain of movies pre-1990 era, IMDb serves as my catalogue for catching up on all the masterpieces. so it was with quite a lot of expectation that i watched FMJ, in-spite of being shockingly disappointed earlier with A clockwork orange and 2001. Kubrick's work to me is...dysfunctional.
I am a real admirer of artistic direction and deep, intriguing story lines with philosophical connotations, but i also firmly believe that every movie should be entertaining, be it at a superficial, sensual, intellectual or emotional level. Sadly, FMJ is none; just a collection of distraught, disturbing scenes that display a reptilian, hollow way of movie direction.
the first half of the movie, that primarily focuses on the android-like training of the marines, would have been effective had it been juxtaposed with the usual camaraderie and banter of the trainees (like in Band of Brothers). it was creepily unnerving to see and hear joker, pyle and company talk to each other like they were from different solar systems. i've never been to military training camps, but surely soldiers everywhere develop affectionate rapports with their colleagues, right? then we switch over to a make-do Vietnam where the movie gets even shabbier. the fighting scenes look like enacted in a theater (slow motions groans and blood spill), the dialogs seem to have been scripted by arnold, stallone and vin diesel and the storyline seems like a headless chicken, going nowhere and painfully bleeding to death. What kind of a person in his senses would walk onto the war-front, with a peace symbol and a gory message printed on his helmet at the same time, and then expect to justify himself by explaining Jungian philosophy to ticked off soldiers? enough said. time to put a FMJ in the original reels of this nonsense.