Review of Full Metal Jacket (1987) by Stuart K — 30 Dec 2012

7 years after The Shining (1980), Stanley Kubrick returned, and this time, he'd made a Vietnam War film, sadly it came out around the same time as Platoon (1986) and Hamburger Hill (1987), which dinted it's box-office.

But, it's still one of the best Vietnam war films ever made, and despite what some people say, the second half of the film in Vietnam is just as powerful as the explosive first part. In Parris Island in North Carolina in 1967, a group of privates including Joker (Matthew Modine), Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Cowboy (Arliss Howard) are placed under the command of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R.

Lee Ermey), who is brutal and draconian. He particually picks on the bumbling Pyle, who can't seem to anything right, but just as it looks like Pyle is starting to show improvement, he goes psycho.

A few months later, Joker is in Vietnam and writing for Stars and Stripes magazine, and he is sent from Da Nang up to Hue just in time for the Tet Offensive, and there he's reunited with Cowboy and he meets the gung-ho Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin).

Kubrick would famously not travel outside the UK, so his Vietnam ranges from Sussex and Norfolk to the Docklands or London, and it's bloody convincing too. He gets the best out of his cast, and he handles the action scenes well, with the climactic battle being bloody and quite suspenseful.