Rather empty and meandering exercise that spends about two hours just to tell us that 'the Vietnam War was rather unpleasant'.

Rating: 6/10 (9 May 2009)

Full Metal Jacket is uneven and oddly uninteresting at the best of times, muddling whatever study of war it wants to make and substituting what should be quality, quality scenes of great drama with iffy bits of 'this and that' action as soldiers sit around, maybe coming under fire, shout a lot and then quite possibly do something stupid enough to get themselves shot. Full Metal Jacket tries to cram in as much as possible to do with the Vietnam War, as it shoots from basic training; to graduation from that; to Vietnam itself; to the battlefield on which the film will conclude whatever documentation, rather than study, it has made. At the be all and end all of it, it's underwhelming at how all this ground and all this distance is covered with not much product at the pinnacle.
There are scenes that you feel should work more than you feel they actually do. One such incidence involves a long take of the lead character walking down a muddied Vietnamese road with someone as tanks and trucks drive by beside them. The lead and the other soldier are talking about whereabouts and locations as they glance at a map of some kind. Your attention is drawn to the ongoing number of vehicles rolling on beside them, the dirt road acting as a metaphor for a conveyor belt as a continuous procession of troops are churned out and into their would-be doom as two human beings discuss the would-be whereabouts of a certain location. It captures the Vietnam War as a whole; a place in which a lot of fire power and lot of people kept getting rolled on into as those outranking them desperately tried to figure out what the Hell was going on and where the Hell everyone should be.
People say the film is split into two 'parts', but it's not. It's actually one particular 'part', complete with characters and study that materialises into something else that just happens to be set elsewhere. Kubrick introduces his film; sets characters up and in true Hitchcockian style, kills off the one character that drives his opening third. But he is left wanting from there on in – with that one, distinct shot that kills a certain someone, I'm tempted to say that the film dies right there in that washroom along with said personnel. What is a pretty brutal, but I would think honestly portrayed, account of what it's like to become a United States Marine, shows various young, drafted Americans being trained to become killing machines for the world of war. But Kubrick is laying a rug under our feet and when the lead character decides it's journalism in which his beck-and-call lies, all this prior show and tell revolving around combat and 'what it's like to be a soldier' was really for not very much, as the lead branches out into another area of expertise. The rug is pulled away and people will say it's clever from Kubrick, I say it's cheating and just a little clumsy.
Matthew Modine plays a certain Private Joker, 'Joker' being an alias he is given by his drill instructor Seargent Hartman (Ermey). The use of an alias and avoidance of use of Joker's real name attributes a certain ambiguity as to his identification, a renowned sense that everybody and anybody could 'represent' him as a character or as a real life person. The opening can be read into one of two ways; either you're going to find it a disturbing and very accurate look at the psychological effects of training for warfare or a series of 'fat' jokes that aren't particularly interesting. The fall guy is Leonard Lawrence (D'Onofrio), given the alias 'Private Pyle'. Pyle is the figure of ridicule throughout, with failings to accomplish the physical tasks the army demands consisting of the brunt of events in the opening hour. He is additionally a part of the film's one glaringly annoying scene during which the camera slowly zooms in on him pulling a would-be psychotic face as Hartman talks of Lee Harvey Oswald, himself an ex-marine, when he assassinated a certain person of a higher 'rank' than him. This foreshadows what is to come in regards to Pyle's own actions.
The majority of what happens in Vietnam is just stuff strung together. Joker goes from one bombed out location to another; he meets someone he knew from his training; he gets into a daft egotistical confrontation with one of those big, bulky, clichéd soldiers who exist purely to maim the enemy and enjoy it (think Andy Serkis in Deathwatch). He'll engage in dialogue by some ancient ruins and pay sly reference as to how, deep down, all the people who survive Vietnam will miss it because a little piece of them will remain here given what an ordeal it really is – but it feels heartless and a little silly. Kubrick marks his finale with a lot of red tints and smatterings of loose flames here and there, burning up the scenery. It's an obvious visual representation of a decent into some sort of Hell as the final confrontation with a sniper is played out. But when people do get shot, Matthew Modine forgets to react and when other G.I.'s are downed by the Vietcong, there is no real reason to feel for them other than to remember that "it really happened, thus I must feel bad for those that really suffered this fate". The film is actually quite a soulless exercise and from what I have seen, is Kubrick's worst work.