Full Metal Jacket movie review

Full Metal Jacket review

Rating: 9.2/10

Let me start off my review by saying that I’m not a big fan of Stanley Kubrick after seeing only one film of his, The Shining. I just didn’t get it at all. It was too vague for me. I don’t mind films that leave a cliffhanger at the end or has room for interpretations. But this is not the case for The Shining, everything is unexplained. For this reason, I can’t tell if the movie is plain genius or just straight out dumb.

Enough of me ranting, this is the review of Full Metal Jacket not The Shining. Full Metal Jacket follows the lives of young men who enlist for the US Marine Corps. The film focuses on how the brutal training and the Vietnam War affect the Marine recruits.

Watching this film gave me a very different experience from watching The Shining. This film feels like it is separated into two parts, the first half of the movie, and the latter. The first half depicts the training the Marine Corps go through. After completing the training, these men go on to be marines, wairriors, men that have purpose in life. But some don’t. Some just mentally don’t change and the training destroys him forever.

In the second half of the film, these men seem to have changed from what they were in that training. They changed the perspective on life, war, and everything else around them and it is fascinating to see the film captures that so well. The transition from the first and the second half is a brilliant one. I’m not going to tell you what it is but it sets out the mood and tone for the rest of the film; the cold atmosphere, the sadness.

This is what I love so much about this film. It tells truths, facts, and events that happened. It captures emotions and feelings that those men had. In this film, Kubrick doesn’t throw some philosophy stuff like he did in the Shining. By the end of the film, you know what he’s trying to say. You know that no one should go through what these men did, that war is bad, fighting is bad. This film was anti-military and I loved that about it.

The only problem I had with the movie is that in the second half of the film, it lost my attention a little bit. Something was missing. It feels like a whole different film with some of the same characters. You are introduced to this whole new world that you are not yet ready for. It lost substance that the first half had. It didn’t have those iconic moments that the first half had. The characters you loved in the first half were either gone or have changed completely.

However, this is just probably 15-20 minutes of the second half of the film. When those boring parts were gone, and the last 40 minutes or so kick in, I loved the film. It depicted great battle sequences and also very realistic ones. It depicted how War could so easily get out of control. But I still loved the first half way more than the second and the first half will remain what anyone remembers when thinking of Full Metal Jacket.

Another reason why this movie works so well is the performances in this film. The performance that, in my opinion, stood out the most was R. Lee Ermey who portrayed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. I read somewhere that he is a former drill instructor or something along those lines. I think this is why his performance is so convincing. Everything word that comes out of his mouth is what I would imagine a drill instructor would say. Although, sometimes mean spirited and menacing, his character is one of the most memorable characters in this film.

Another character that stood out was Private Pyle played by Vincent D'Onofrio. I love his character. He is the type of person that you would not normally find in the Marine Corps. He comes out as rather childish. This is the reason why his character is so fascinating. He gave a perfect example of why some people can’t handle War, why some people are not born to kill. His performance was memorable, convincing, and a terribly sad one.

I loved loved this film. I think it is one of the best war movies ever although I still haven’t seen the other classic ones but this has got to be one of the top ones. It shows what War can do to some people. It would change people’s lives forever. It saves lives and also destroys lives. Stanley Kubrick achieves this so well without even having to put in brutal scenes in the film. I definitely like this film more than The Shining although they are very different films.

I recommend this movie to everyone. It’s beautifully directed, acted, and written. This is a film that depicts the realism of War. You will certainly have a think about what War could do to people after watching this movie. The film sticks with you. It’s a memorable film that anyone should watch. It’s brilliant.