Full Metal Jacket Movie Review

Full Metal Jacket came out during a wave of Vietnam War movies. Starting with Platoon, these films began to reopen the American dialogue about that tragic war. It was roughly ten years after the fall of Saigon, and I suppose the filmmakers of the era finally had the clout to make their own visions of the war and could no longer resist commenting on those events, while the viewing public was ready to reexamine one of America's most contentious and disastrous eras.

Full Metal Jacket was one of the best of the Vietnam films of the 1980s, though as a film, it has its flaws. Directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Vincent D'Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, and Matthew Modine, it is the tale of soldiers training for the conflict, then their experiences during the pivotal Tet Offensive.

Because the movie is fairly evenly split between basic training and the war in Vietnam, it at times seems like two entirely different movies. At the same time, you get a deeper understanding of the Marine Corps experience in the 1960s, seeing both the war and preparation for war. You might even begin to understand why men like Sgt. Hartmen push marine soldiers the way they do, once you see what they are training to undergo--though I doubt you'll sympathize with Hartman too much.

Marine Basic Training

The first half of the film is the most quotable, and the most effective, in my mind. Ask most people and R. Lee Ermey's quotable sergeant and Vincent D'Onofrio's "Private Pyle" are tend to be what they remember most about the film. The training sequences are intense, and it's hard to take your eyes off the screen.

Tet Offensive

At the same time, since the two most memorable characters aren't in the second half of Full Metal Jacket, the actual war scenes in many ways seem less dramatic and less intense. I find that D'Onofrio and Ermey so dominated the action and characterization of the first half of the film, that I might not have connected as much to Joker and Cowboy as I should have. That's certainly not the intention of Kubrick, who made these men the center of the narrative.

For this reason, I consider the second half of Full Metal Jacket something of an artistic failure. The scenes of battle are intense and you get an idea of the panic and chaos of the Tet Offensive, but you aren't drawn into the story in following Joker Davis and Cowboy Evans as much as you should be.

Still, outside of Platoon, Full Metal Jacket is probably the best cinematic introduction to the Vietnam War among that glut of movies from the 1980s, when filmmakers were close enough to the war to film raw stories about that era, but far enough to way to add a little perspective. If you are in the younger generation and you want to watch a good Vietnam War movie, Full Metal Jacket should be on your short list.