Full Metal Jacket (1987)
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Full Metal Jacket Movie Review
Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Matthew Modine and Lee Ermey. It’s a very strong, highly memorable movie.
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“I bet you’re the kind of guy that would fuck
a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn
common courtesy to give him a reach-around.
I’ll be watching you“
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Because this is basically a film that contains two movies in one, I will talk about them each separately. The first movie is terrific, absolutely fantastic. It follows these privates training for Vietnam War and being tormented by their very abusive instructor. I loved everything about this part because it was believable and also relatable in the privates’ frustrations and angers.
Lee Ermey is absolutely terrific in this very colorful and iconic role. The fact that he’s not a professional actor is mind-blowing as he is absolutely amazing here and he was robbed by the Academy. Sergeant Hartman instantly went into the history books as one of cinema’s more memorable creations, and the film is the most alive when he’s on screen.
His insults are both rude and very well thought out, sometimes even hilarious in the mixing of the curses. He’s a great presence that the movie felt hollow when he left. But I also really liked Vincent D’Onofrio as Private Leonard. This character is also carefully developed, grounded in reality and his eventual descent into madness is believable because it was so well approached.
Matthew Modine as Joker is also solid, but definitely this character can get overly annoying, especially in the second part where many soldiers are incredibly obnoxious in their willingness to kill, but that was the point of the movie I guess so overall I was fine with it.
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Speaking of that second act, that’s where the movie stumbled just a bit. When watching the film the first time, I loved both parts. But upon second viewing, the first part remained great whereas the second one suffered quite a bit.
I still hugely appreciate the very strong action sequences in this part. Because they were so well executed, the movie becomes a harrowing, very believable, video-game like excursion into the war field and combat. But the thematic territory was a bit ambiguous here and not for the good. I still liked this part as it was technically strong and sometimes it had right things to say, but overall it just wasn’t as amazing as the first part clearly was.
Full Metal Jacket is thus an uneven movie, but I wouldn’t call it disparate as Ebert basically said it is. His review is overly harsh as even though it has its flaws, it’s still a great movie in my opinion, and one of the director’s best. His direction here is fantastic throughout and it’s definitely the most engaging film that he has ever directed. That goes without saying.
The cinematography is also absolutely superb, in both parts actually. Some scenes are so beautifully shot that some moments become very memorable. The whole movie is actually very memorable, ranking among the couple of quintessential Vietnam War movies to see.
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I also liked the score, and I really like the dialogue. Actually, it’s the film’s best suit by far. The humor is great and many lines of dialogue are hilarious here, but also some are observational and smart. But thematically speaking, it could have been a stronger film. Also, ‘Paths of Glory’ is a better anti-war movie than this one when it comes to the message.
Full Metal Jacket definitely is inferior in its second half, but that part is exhilarating in its action scenes as they are so well filmed across the board. But the first part is where the movie truly shined thanks in no small part to Lee Ermey’s Sergeant Hartman who is an iconic, hilarious character. The dialogue is fantastic, the humor is great, and the film is superbly shot and phenomenally directed throughout.
