Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Full Metal Jacket is one of Kubrick's later works, and one that is often seen as his last great film. Kubrick is a very polarising director so it could also be seen as just one in a pile of his films.

Full Metal Jacket holds up very well, and has very good pacing, unlike some other Kubrick films like 2001: A Space Odyssey. It follows the Marine Core during the Vietnam war in two stages. It first looks at their eight-week training course, where we are introduced to a group of trainees, focussing on Private Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio pictured above) and Private Joker (Matthew Modine). It then looks at the Marines in Vietnam, beginning after the Tet offensive and working around that period, where we also follow Joker, and fellow trainee Cowboy (Arliss Howard) and his squad, though not Pyle, as he kills himself in an iconic scene.

Kubrick again shows his meticulous research ethic in portraying what is often called the most realistic look at a boot camp in film. The way that the drill instructor Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) systematically destroys Pyle, while giving the rest of the group someone to hate in the process, is a brilliant story that has a serious emotional punch to it at the end. The whole process is portrayed as very demoralising, only preparing them for what is to come.

There are some very impressive shots in the boot camp, with the opening scene following Hartman as he inspects the new recruits brilliantly setting the film out, but the truly jaw-dropping shots are left for their Vietnam stage. Every scene in Vietnam just looks stunning and incredibly well-staged by cinematographer Douglas Milsome, obviously working very hard to make the scenes work with Kubrick, with a refreshing lack of hand-held camera in heavy war scenes due to the amount of time put into the editing and the filming. The Vietnam story largely looks at the futility of the situation as the soldiers grow more and more demoralised about what they are achieving. We are also introduced to some more colourful characters, including the instantly recognisable Adam Baldwin (Chuck, Firefly) as Animal Mother, a trigger-happy nutcase.

The acting is brilliant as usual from a Kubrick film. He is often able to coax great performances from his actors due to his relentless drive and perfectionism. I would say that R. Lee Erney and Vincent D'Onofrio stood out as doing the best job in this movie, but it was against very steep competition from the rest of the cast.

The power that this film has is a testament to Kubrick's genius. The way that the story is told is masterful, with both segments brilliantly worked to tie together a very demoralising theme. The closing scene shows a large amount of what went wrong with the Vietnam war from a non-American perspective. Three men are downed while going after one well-hidden sniper, as Animal Mother pushes on to get the sniper. This relentless drive is able to show how mis-guided the Americans were during the Vietnam war, with this sequence representing a microcosm of the war effort.

Overall I would say this would be the best war film that I have ever seen, modern "great war movies" like Saving Private Ryan simply cannot compete for strong story-telling and lush cinematography. 5 out 5