Two Parts

Rating: 8/10 (10 June 2006)

Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is a film of two parts. The first part deals with the basic training of the Marine Corps being built to become killers. R. Lee Ermey gives one of the best performances i've seen as the intense drill instructor. For most of the first part, his speeches and training tactics are very funny, but soon you realize that he does not care about these men's lives and only wishes for them to be killing machines. We realize this when he asks the trainees about some famous snipers, like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was trained to shoot in the Marines and how he respects that man for getting in so many shots in such a short amount of time and hitting his moving target twice. He truly honors Oswald. He dehumanizes them, especially a fat private by the name of Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio). Pyle makes a few mistakes, and soon we see that the Sergeant is out to get him and seems to want the rest of the trainees to dislike him. And this Sergeant knows how to hold a grudge. There are a few spectacular scenes, and the first ten minutes are the best opening minutes to a movie I have ever seen. I was into every second of the basic training scenes, from the opening montage to the disturbing but brilliant last scene, the final confrontation between a few main characters.
The second part to this movie, however, is much different. It is about life during the war. The main character of the movie, Private Joker (Matthew Modine) goes to fight with his old friend "Cowboy" and his men in the city of Hue. I did not like this part of the film nearly as much as the first for many reasons. First of all, there was a feeling to the first part that just doesn't seem like it was there in the second part. I really felt for the characters during the training, but when they were fighting I felt less attached to them. Most of this part of the film is the men hiding behind walls and getting shot. While it is interesting, I felt that I had had enough after a little while. There is one very good part to me, when the men are being interviewed by a documentary crew. You get to see how different people saw the war, and it seemed to remind me of the dehumanization process the war brings as well as some comedy from some things the men said when answering the questions. The opening scene to the second part is also kind of amusing. Besides that, I don't have much to say about the fighting in Vietnam. Because, after all, there just isn't that much to it besides guns and blood.
Basic Training: 10/10 Vietnam War: 6/10 Final Grade: 8/10