More a Showcase of Kubrick's Powerful Instincts Than a Dramatic Narrative of the War

Rating: 10/10 (9 June 2009)

Standing alone, Full Metal Jacket is yet another showcase of Stanley Kubrick's powerful instincts with gritty compositions, drawing out disturbing qualities in his actors and creating an atmosphere in which each of your senses are not so much drawn in as intensely experienced when applied to it. As one among the group of films in the 1970s and '80s about the Vietnam War, it is about the subject matter, yet the subject is not even close to being as deeply felt by the filmmaker. Oliver Stone brought his own front-line experiences to Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and even Heaven and Earth, all of which engage an audience in emotional hurricanes. Francis Ford Coppola achieved the nightmarish effect of war in Apocalypse Now because he subjected himself to such hurricanes in his own nightmarish experience of making the film; he made ruthless, often amoral decisions which largely impacted many of that movie's most affecting images. It's a great film that does not want you to like it. Full Metal Jacket suffers at the hand of what makes most of Kubrick's work great, which is his reasonable detachment from, his automatic response to the material.
Full Metal Jacket has by many young men been memorialized as a favorite, on account of its vividly foremost performances by R. Lee Ermey, as the drill commander who barks more catchy one-liners than one would imagine truly incites fear, and Vincent D'Onofrio, who with serene innocence reacts understandably to such laughable quips, which makes him a target from day one, a benign, overweight airhead whose metamorphosis is a masterpiece of horror.
There are many scenes in the latter half of this chillingly dry film that seem more theatrical than cinematic, or documentary-like. The first act, easily the most popular among the movie's myriad fans, is promising because it intimately follows a select few faces in a ruthlessly strict boot camp. We are seeing an aspect not much before seen, to markedly memorable, not to mention extensively quotable, effect. What comes later, in the combat zones leading toward and during the 1967 Tet Offensive, sees the boot camp segment as a tough first act to follow. Scenes of the focal platoon's reflections on their casualties, sadly ignorant views on the war, lounging banter, are at times robotically scripted, stiffly physicalized.
The movie's final arrangement, in which our platoon is trapped in a desolate zone with an unseen sniper, is brilliant, however. They are projecting every American fear generated by the upending preoccupation with not knowing what against which they must defend themselves. When they finally discover the shooter, point blank, the augmentation and diminishment of the characters who've made it thus far depend on whether or not they realize how little they truly did know before that moment. Even the central character, if one could call him that, does not seem to know just how many volumes it speaks.