Full Metal Jacket

The movie world has seen countless war films. Lawrence Of Arabia, The Bridge On The River Kwai, The Deer Hunter, Saving Private Ryan, all great films that defined the genre. They were everything a war films should be: Intense, emotional, powerful, and filled with great action scenes. While these are all important, 1 element that is rarely abundant in a war film is humour. But today's movie has more of it than every other war film combined; none other than Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam war saga Full Metal Jacket.

Released in 1987, Full Metal Jacket stars Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Arliss Howard and Vincent D'Onofrio. Filmed almost entirely in the suburbs of London, the movie follows the dehumanising process that turns men into emotionally removed killers, ready to be dispatched to Vietnam, and their subsequent exploits once they arrive, and are faced with the reality of combat. While it does cover a lot of issues of war such as tragedy, comradeship, moral dilemmas and so on, the reason this movie appeals to me is it's comedic side, let's find out why.

The film opens in the Parris Island Marine Corps. Recruit Depot, where we find a batch of new recruits about to begin their training. Their senior Drill Instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (Ermey, a real-life Drill Instructor) wastes no time in laying into them, shouting insults, screaming commands and endowing them with nicknames, including 2 of our main characters Joker (Modine) and Cowboy (Howard). Hartman puts the recruits through their paces, using his acid-tongue to encourage them and ensure that nobody dares slip up. As his training regime intensifies, the strain begins to show for one of the neophytes, Leonard Lawrence, a.k.a Gomer Pyle (D'Onofrio), an overweight and mentally slow individual, who finds that he can't live up to Hartman's expectations.

Infuriated by Pyle's shortcomings, Hartman pushes Pyle harder and harder, and when he teams him with Joker, he seems to become a model Marine. But Joker believes that Pyle is actually a 'Section 8' ie, mentally defective.

After their training is completed, we cut to Vietnam, where Joker has become a combat correspondent for Star and Stripes, stationed in Da Nang. He and his associate Rafterman are dispatched to Phu Bai after the Tet Offensive, where he meets up with Cowboy, and becomes engaged in combat, witnessing the horrors of war first hand.

                                                     You will not laugh, you will not cry!

Now when I said this film is hilarious, I was actually referring to the first 40-odd minutes, when Hartman is toughening up the recruits. Undoubtedly, Hartman is one of cinemas all-time greatest characters. As I mentioned earlier, Ermey was a Drill Instructor during the Vietnam war, and as such, what we get is not a performance by an actor, but an authentic depiction from a real-life veteran. His performance is so intense, so edgy and yet so hysterical that I simply can't take my eyes off it. Roughly half of his dialogue is ad-libbed, and the rest of it he wrote himself, both extreme rarities for a Kubrick film.

His insults are hilarious, his timing is flawless, and his presence is spectacular. But after his time in the film is done, I'll be honest, I tend to lose interest. The rest of the movie isn't bad, but it just feels like a sub-standard war movie. It's like 2 movies, 1 comedy and 1 war film, spliced together. As a result, it feels quite disjointed. When watching the second half of the film, it's almost as if the first half never occurred at all, which is a real shame.

I won't lie and say that the second part of the movie isn't moving or even affecting, but when you compare it to other Vietnam movies such as Platoon and The Deer Hunter, it feels pretty below par. But the first 40 minutes are a laugh-riot, and leave me in stiches every time. It's a movie on it's own, and it never disappoints.