Kubrick produced some very memorable films.\u00a0 All the ones I\u2019ve seen are extremely idiosyncratic.\u00a0 Full Metal Jacket is definitely in the same mold.\u00a0 It tells the story of a group of U.S. Marines from boot camp to their participation in the Tet Offensive during the height of the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n
In the opening scene the Drill Sargent played memorably by R. Lee Ermey berates and sometimes beats on the recruits to cow them and focus their attention on how serious their situation was.\u00a0 I won\u2019t reveal the details of the boot camp section of the movie but suffice it to say that the consequences of the discipline prove to be as serious as the consequences of war itself.<\/p>\n
After the boot camp scenes we go directly to Vietnam and meet up with the new Marines.\u00a0 One has ended up as a reporter with the military news service \u201cStars and Stripes.\u201d\u00a0 He is bored and anxious to get into the field to see the real war.\u00a0 With the beginning of the Tet Offensive he gets his wish.\u00a0 He\u2019s sent up country and meets up with one of his boot camp buddies and joins their patrol.\u00a0 Here he sees the real war with all the brutality and even criminality associated with a guerilla war.\u00a0 And here we meet the most interesting character of the movie, Animal Mother played by the inimitable Adam Baldwin.\u00a0 He\u2019s the M60 machine gunner of the platoon wearing ammunitions belts like bandoliers across his chest and shooting an enormous number of rounds at anything that fired at him.\u00a0 When asked how the war should end he stated that the \u201csmart guys\u201d should bomb North Vietnam into surrendering.\u00a0 He\u2019s brutal and completely uninterested in helping the South Vietnamese, only in killing the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese and anyone else who gives him trouble.<\/p>\n
The final battle scenes show the patrol running into a sniper position.\u00a0 One of their men is hit in a forward position.\u00a0 The acting squad leader is worried that a large North Vietnamese force is ahead and doesn\u2019t allow his men to retrieve the downed man even after the sniper continues to wound him with additional shots.\u00a0 Finally after seeing the wounded man hit several times, Animal Mother charges in.\u00a0 He manages to reach cover and determines that a lone sniper is at work.\u00a0 When the patrol reaches him they take further casualties including the acting squad leader.\u00a0 The final scenes show the ironic nature of this unconventional war and the effect it has on the Americans who have to navigate it.\u00a0 But as insane as their world has become, they still celebrate the fact that they\u2019ve survived what so many have not.<\/p>\n
Based on the tone of his earlier movie \u201cDoctor Strangelove\u201d I assume Kubrick was not a patriotic cheerleader of the Vietnam War but I would say he represented the war right down the middle.\u00a0 He showed the horror but he doesn\u2019t have the men represented by only pacifists.\u00a0 They represent a cross-section of attitudes.\u00a0 They show a cross section of behaviors from humane to sadistic.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been called a classic.\u00a0 I\u2019d say Full Metal Jacket is a Kubrick style take on the Vietnam War.\u00a0 I have a brother-in-law who was in the Tet Offensive.\u00a0 I remember his description of what went on and it seems to jibe very closely to what Kubrick is showing.\u00a0 That speaks well of what Kubrick made.\u00a0\u00a0I think it\u2019s a good movie and one of the few representations of that war that gets it right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kubrick produced some very memorable films.\u00a0 All the ones I\u2019ve seen are extremely idiosyncratic.\u00a0 Full Metal Jacket is definitely in the same mold.\u00a0 It tells<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[9,43,38,697,1079,1078],"class_list":["post-3035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-adam-baldwin","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-stanley-kubrick","tag-tet-offensive","tag-vietnam-war"],"yoast_head":"\n