Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Average Rating: 8.4/10
Reviews Counted: 70
Fresh: 66 | Rotten: 4
Intense, tightly constructed, and darkly comic at times, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket may not boast the most original of themes, but it is exceedingly effective at communicating them.
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Critic Reviews: 14
Fresh: 12 | Rotten: 2
Intense, tightly constructed, and darkly comic at times, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket may not boast the most original of themes, but it is exceedingly effective at communicating them.
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Average Rating: 4.1/5
User Ratings: 317,064
Movie Info
Stanley Kubrick's return to filmmaking after a seven-year hiatus, this film crystallizes the experience of the Vietnam War by concentrating on a group of raw Marine volunteers. Based on Gustav Hasford's novel The Short Timers, the film's first half details the volunteers' harrowing boot-camp training under the profane, power-saw guidance of drill instructor Sgt. Hartman (R. Lee Ermey, a real-life drill instructor whose performance is one of the most terrifyingly realistic on record). Part two
Jun 17, 1987 Wide
Jun 29, 1999
Warner Bros.
Watch It Now
Cast
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Matthew Modine
Private Joker/Privat... -
Adam Baldwin
Animal Mother -
Vincent D'Onofrio
Leonard Lawrence Pvt... -
R. Lee Ermey
Gunnery Sgt. Hartman -
Dorian Harewood
Eightball -
Arliss Howard
Pvt. Cowboy -
Kevin Howard
Rafterman -
Ed O'Ross
Walter J. Schinoski ... -
John Terry
Lt. Lockhart -
Kirk Taylor
Sgt. Payback -
Ian Tyler
Lt. Cleves -
Papillon Soo Soo
Da Nang Hooker -
Tan Hung Francione
ARVN Pimp -
Costas Dino Chimona
Chili -
Peter Merrill
TV Journalist -
Keiron Jecchinis
Crazy Earl -
John Stafford
Doc Jay -
Gary Landon Mills
Donlon -
Ngoc Le
V.C. Sniper -
Leanne Hong
Motorbike Hooker -
Gil Kopel
Stork -
Herbert Norville
Daytona Dave -
Bruce Boa
Colonel Poge -
Tim Colceri
Doorgunner -
Sal Lopez
T.H.E Rock -
Peter "Snowball" Edm...
Snowball -
Marcus D'Amico
Handjob -
Keith Hodlak
Daddy Da -
Nguyen Hue Phong
Camera Thief -
Harry Davies
Marine -
Robert Nichols
Marine -
Dave Perry
Marine -
Michael Williams
Marine -
Tony Carey
Marine -
David George
Marine -
Derek Hart
Marine -
Du Hu Ta
Dead NVA -
Chad Dowdell
Dying Soldier (uncre... -
John Wilson
Marine -
Bill Thompson
Marine -
Tony Smith
Marine -
Steve Hudson
Marine -
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All Critics (70) | Top Critics (14) | Fresh (66) | Rotten (4) | DVD (26)
If his considerable achievement in this long- awaited film falls short of his Olympian standards, there is a reason that ought to give Kubrick some satisfaction. The world has caught up with Kubrick and what he has to say.
Top CriticIt may seem too spare, too clinical, its moments of war even too familiar for some. But, aiming for minds as well as hearts, Kubrick hits his target squarely.
What gives this story its power is not really its originality, but the relentlessness of Kubrick's black-comic vision and the tightness of his focus.
There is a real fear at the heart of this monstrously armored, desperately defensive film.
It's a great piece of filmmaking, diminished only by a second act that fails to live up to the first act of the Marines in training.
Full Metal Jacket is not a realistic film -- it is horror-comic superrealism, from a God's-eye view -- but it should fully engage the ordinary movie grunt.
No amount of stylistic analysis, however, is likely to explain why a man would devote more than three years of his life to making a war movie in which violent death isn't meant to move us. Does Kubrick really think we're not callous enough about war?
While its message is simple -- innocent young Americans are taught to be machine-like killers -- its technique is extraordinary.
If a film doesn't give us people, it has to offer a substitute -- an idea, a style, a vision. Full Metal Jacket comes up blank.
Relentlessly harsh in its images and language, Full Metal Jacket is nonetheless the most artful film yet made about the Vietnam War.
Full Metal Jacket is a great motion picture. Be warned, however, that it is harsh and explicit.
It still qualifies as one of Kubrick's most underrated pictures, and it's second only to Apocalypse Now as the best Vietnam War movie ever made.
Kubrick again turns his unsparing eye to the dread of existence...of a godless universe...of moral frailty and civilization gone wrong...[Blu-ray]
Extremely graphic, violent Vietnam War film.
It still stands as a timeless meditation on war and its effects.
Less about the Vietnam War than about how the Marine Corps turns its recruits into killers.
Visually poetic, darkly humorous, uncompromisingly brutal, and subversive in every way, Full Metal Jacket is easily one of the best war movies without being remotely similar to your standard issue war flick.
Kubrick seems to be directing his vision beyond the reality of the Vietnam War to issues far more universal and timeless.
Somehow after the decadence of Barry Lyndon and a philosophical look at horror in The Shining, Stanley Kubrick settled into a film of unrestrained vitriol and aggression.
A hardy Kubrikian effort that warms on you with repeated viewings.
Audience Reviews for Full Metal Jacket
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
Movies Like Full Metal Jacket
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- Gunnery Sgt. Hartman: You climb like old people fuck private pile!
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- Gunnery Sgt. Hartman: If god wanted you up there I am sure he would have miracled your ass up there by now, private Pyle.
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- Gunnery Sgt. Hartman: You like the kind of boy who could suck a golf ball through a garden hose.
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- Gunnery Sgt. Hartman: [addressing the Privates] There will be no racial bigotry here! I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops, or greasers! Here, you are ALL equally useless!
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- Gunnery Sgt. Hartman: Where are you from, anyway?
- Pvt. Cowboy: SIR, TEXAS, SIR!
- Gunnery Sgt. Hartman: TEXAS? Holy dogshit! Only steers and queers come from texas!! And you don't much look like a steer to me so that kind of narrows it down. Do you suck dick?
- Pvt. Cowboy: SIR, NO, SIR!
- Gunnery Sgt. Hartman: I BET YOU'RE THE KIND OF GUY WHO'D FUCK A MAN IN THE ASS AND NOT HAVE THE COMMON COURTESY TO GIVE HIM A REACH-AROUND.
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- Private Joker/Private J.T. Davis: Is that you John Wayne, is this me?
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The story (taken from Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers) opens with a bunch of green marine recruits undergoing military training at Parris Island. The drill instructor Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) is a ruthless, motor-mouthed loony who relentlessly humiliates and desensitizes his boys, so that when he has finally stripped them of their humanity he can rebuild them as single-minded killing machines. Among the bunch is happy-go-lucky Private Joker (Matthew Modine), and the vaguely ridiculous (and ridiculed) Private Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio). As the recruits near the end of their grueling training regime, Pyle finally cracks under the strain and kills the gunnery sergeant, before turning his gun on himself. The action jumps forward to find Joker on a tour of duty in Vietnam. He is by this point a military journalist who has seen some pretty unpleasant sights during his time in 'Nam (and is divided by his experiences - notice his Born To Kill helmet and his Peace buttoned jacket). The platoon he is part of becomes involved in a street battle in the ruins of Hue City near the film's climax, where they find themselves pinned down and picked off by a female Vietcong sniper. Finally, after much panic and bloodshed, darkness falls and the marines retreat into the night singing the Mickey Mouse March.
Where Kubrick really hits his target is in his depiction of the emotional change within Modine's character, and in his cold and cynical (and authentic) view of the dehumanization that results from being subjected to warfare. Women and children become acceptable targets for the gun-toting soldiers; fear of death gives way to callous indifference; violence becomes normal; horrific deaths and injuries become commonplace to the point of disinterest. No-one in the film can remember the cause they're fighting for or, if they can, they never refer to it. It's just one side versus the other, locked in a costly, savage stalemate, as they enter into violent engagements simply because it's expected of them. The lack of real location work is a problem - Kubrick wouldn't film outside England, so the final gun exchange in Hue City was actually shot in a disused London factory yard, complete with imported palm trees. Also, the film is so intentionally detached from compassion that it becomes hard to relate to anyone in the film. While we're supposed to be shocked by the utter indifference with which people are killed or injured during warfare, the total refusal to present a glimmer of feeling or sympathy makes the film's second half as icily distant as it is bloodthirsty.
Full Metal Jacket is certainly powerful and potent, but it really is a tale of two halves. Kubrick's specificity in examining the psychology of the solider is so unrelenting and, dare I say militant; the second half doesn't have the same urgency, which leaves the viewer with a sense of deflation.