War films like this

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2000)

"It's a lovely f***ing war." This acts as the true repudiation of all of the Gung-ho Ra-Ra "we're gonna win this time" action films of the 1980's, but it also gets to have it's cake and eat it by being a muscular, hardcore damn (and damning) action picture, photographed by Robert Richardson in the days when he was still coming off being a documentary cameraman and before he got into his spotlights. It's Full Metal Oliver Stone, so much of what he was as a young 'grunt' in the 's***' that was Vietnam but also what he was in the intervening years (it took him a while to figure out what kind of movie it was, about 7 years after he left he wrote a first draft, another 10 years until it got made).
I don't know if necessarily Stone had Rambo and the Chuck Norris pieces of crap or all those other movies where people were returning to Vietnam to "win again", to fulfill some kind of vision that America didn't really *lose*, but there are two aspects of this movie that do a wonderful job of giving the middle finger to the military industrial complex and even military movies: Tom Berenger's hard-ass Sgt. Barnes, who gets s**t done and is a tough motherf****r, but also shirks responsibility for his rage and in killing innocents in full view of others and cold blood (maybe a minor plot-gap - sure Elias might stir hell up and report him, but even if he's gone no one else would speak up about a, you know *Court Martial*-able crime? oh well, I'll let it go I guess), and yet you completely understand who he is and what he's doing, why even if he is a true antagonist in his brutality he's human in his monstrosity, if that makes sense (see how he chugs Jack Daniels when he makes his 'I s*** on all of you' entrance to the other grunts talking about whether to take him out or not).
The other aspect is the climax; this is one of those major, hyper-realistic and hyper-violent and intense action set pieces with lots of gunfire and explosions and chaos, but a) you can understand everything going on (it'd be nice to show this sequence to action editors and directors today), and more important b) the Americans lose. The VC take over the military camp and the whole perimeter, and there's no choice but to call in the planes to drop some bombs on the area. It shouldn't be overlooked: the Americans *lose*, which encapsulates the message of the movie. Of course there were war movies before that didn't celebrate one side or the other - All Quiet on the Western Front, Paths of Glory - but a lot of those films were exceptions.
Though Full Metal Jacket came out a mere six months later - a coincidence I'm sure - many other movies, great ones, came out due to this one being released (Casualties of War being the most notable to me, but also Stone's other war pictures; oddly enough he wanted to also make Born on the 4th of July years before and only Platoon made it possible). I don't even know if it's his best or my personal favorite, but it certainly shows a filmmaker screaming out his concerns and passions as an artist about a place and time that is also meant to stretch beyond this war and to others; when Sheen gives that on the surface preachy narration at the end about "we didn't fight the enemy, we fought ourselves," it can be spread out into other wars, other times people who thought they were in the right, the Barnes and Rambos, didn't see the BS (or accepted it, said 'screw it' with a giant machine gun).
Last note: Willem Dafoe's Jesus pose makes for a helluva poster, but in the context of the scene it's in... is it earned? There's enough operatic-horrors going on, which is fine, but it comes off as a bit much. But it's Dafoe so, I dunno, he's awesome.