Review of Full Metal Jacket (1987) by Ethan P — 11 Jun 2017

I don't know what to think about Full Metal Jacket because it felt very divided, almost like I was watching different movies. The first act was brilliant, in its structure and its very human story. It was incredibly intense and filled with dark humor. It's filmed so that the events are captured in one perfectly tidy and symmetric set after another. It's narrative is simple and effective, following the regiment as they rise from unruly, stumbling recruits into an orderly unit and simultaneously descend into madness at the same time. Some of the coolest parts of the film were the Instructor's obscene and demeaning monologues, which are somehow terrifying and hilarious at once. The instructor provides the foundation for the whole first part of the movie and when he dies, I felt the film's importance died with him. The conclusion where Gomer Pyle kills the Instructor and then himself is deeply sad and a very powerful ending. The scene before, where the whole regiment beats him with soap, is terrifying too and when the regiment chants their rifle love song, I thought it was very cool. We are strangers with the characters, but their desperation and anger makes it meaningful. In itself, the first act was a very affecting and interesting story about the toll of preparing to be a soldier.

The second act is much weaker than the first and it isn't cohesive with it. In the first act, the film focuses on the regiment as a whole and doesn't get personal with the recruits to show that their grueling experience is a universal one. The second act's main issue is it tries to be intimate with characters we aren't intimate with and we know little about. The acting is good, the dialogue is sharp, but we're strangers with the soldiers. There are flashes of insightful thinking about the "duality of man" and war, but its message is muddled by the fact that we don't care about the characters and the events that follow aren't all that interesting. Joker has some interesting qualities, but he's not strong enough to carry the second act. He wants to kill, but finds out he really isn't good under pressure. The scenes are framed well, but they don't have any weight or spectacle, so it feels pretty harmless and borrows from better war movies. An entire platoon of 15 men can barely take on a young girl, who kills four of them until they find her. When the characters die, it doesn't really matter. If I was to watch this movie again, I might just watch the first half because on its own, it's pretty spectacular and the second act diminishes its effect.