"I love the commie bastards"

Rating: 10/10 (14 February 2011)

Stanley Kubrick is one of the finest directors to have ever lived. He has made genuine and breath taking works of art in an each and every last genre, from sci-fi, to horror, drama and so forth. Naturally, when Kubrick took on a war film, it was bound to be stunning. The result is just as expected. It's pretty standard for people to distinguish the film as almost two separate movies. To me, that isn't so. The first 'half' is merely to show that the dehumanization starts in training. The inner demons, the act of killing, is brought out to its fullest by their Gny. Sgt. Hartman, played excellently by the awesome R. Lee Ermey. It is also clearly depicts that some men are not as attuned to this natural instinct as others, as seen in Private Pyle who's struggle to become one of these well groomed and structured killers leads to his untimely insanity. Vincent D'Onofrio was just plain psychotic looking, and was so damn good in his role, it frightened me. In a sick but all too true sense, the characters are trained to let go of decency, morality and mercy, as long as they accomplish their mission in the war.
In reality though, who am I to say I'd live up to the 'codes of conduct' of war in the field? Who are any of us to say so? Many of us have not been in the heat of battle, had to watch our friends blown to pieces, or the fatal decision to take a life you really don't know. That is the struggle of Joker, who Matthew Modine played excellently by the way. The whole cast portrays this loss of human compassion that savage war has engraved in them. Aliss Howard as Cowboy was pretty good as well, but I loved Adam Baldwin as Animal Mother who has a understandably nihilistic view of it all. I'll never forget his helmet writing, "I Am Become Death", from the Bhagavad Gita.
It's incredibly hard to name my favorite scene, not just because there are so many to choose from but because of the disturbing content. Sure, there are small jokes here and there, but under lying the whole Vietnam segment is an atmosphere of a strangely accepted brutality which Rafter Man calls "hardcore". Whether it to be the scene of Sergeant Crazy Earl's "best friend's birthday" or the Alabama black snake scene, it's all just great to watch. Perhaps it's Tim Coleri's scenes as the door gunner. As the bodies fall, all he can do is laugh and accept that war is truly hell. All together a masterpiece of film work and a war film that ranks among the best ever shot.