Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

◊^^^Synopsis^^^◊ Full Metal Jacket is Stanley Kubrick’s painful depiction of the lives of new marine trainees as they go through training, graduate and finally end up in Vietnam. A large proportion of the film focuses on the harsh and inhumane training designed to dehumanize people and turn them into, with the help of the demoralising D.I (Lee Ermey), into indestructible killers for the benefit of the United States, men without fear. ...
...be a great film and Full Metal Jacket is a prime example of this. The film is exceptionally well based on sources and information from the war and marine training and is reasonably historically correct when it comes to the facts. I feel it exploits no bias as it admits that due to marine training Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy. Therefore, although it may not be totally truthful, the film appears to be very reliable in the situations and treatment ...

guydavies123 01.07.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

...and directed by Stanley Kubrick Full Metal Jacket (“FMJ”) is a film about the Vietnam War that was released back in September 1987. I have never really been one for DVD extras and bonus features and would prefer to see the feature film only. Therefore this is a review of the film only and I will not comment on any of the extras that are available on the DVD. ****Plot**** FMJ starts in a Marine Corp training camp in Paris Island, South Carolina, ...
...and after having their identities taken away, along with the obligatory headshave, begin their gruelling training for the Vietnam War. During their time at the camp the new platoon remain under the scrutiny of Drill Sergeant Hartman (R Lee Ermey) and after the first encounter it is easy to see why Sergeant Hartman has the reputation of being the nastiest sergeant in the camp. The recruits, known only by the nick names given to them by Hartman, are ...

yackers1 16.05.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

...first dialogue in the film Full Metal Jacket, as as you can see (or read for that matter) it is quite relentless and in your face and it sums up the context of the film quite nicely... “I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman your senior drill instructor. From now on you will speak only when spoken to. And the first and last words out of your sewers is ‘sir!’ Do you maggots understand that? *******! I can’t here you. Sound off like you’ve got a pair. If you ...
...when they are in combat. Full Metal Jacket explores this pysche from the very roots of the Millitary. Producer, Writer and Director Stanley Kubrick ("A Clockwork Orange", "2001:- A Space Oddesy") brings his surreal yet human touch to this film with a certain ironic and scathing humour with sweaping and dynamic camerawork. Business as usual then... The performances from the leads; there is no real lead as such as each character is as important as ...

DarkMark 01.05.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

...and A Clockwork Orange are full of staggeringly powerful visuals, but they make the best of small budgets and despite being far ahead of their time, don't have the slick Hollywood look of his two 80s movies, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket. Everything about this film looks perfect. The war scenes may have been filmed using old crumbling factory buildings found around England, but when you see those pillars of flame pluming out from the torn-up ...
...of serious epic war films full of grand gestures and seriousness and the comic war films where everything is absurd and exaggerated. In every way, a remarkable piece of work. A visual spectacle, a great soundtrack of period music, some moments that are immortal in motion picture history and a few extremely well-sketched characters, it's another film that doesn't rely on a clever plot or any kind of overall goal, but focuses on a setting and explores ...

Adziu 10.10.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

So ends this famous film by Stanley Kubrick, as Private Joker marches off into a night lit only the flames from burning buildings, fresh from his first kill, and safe in the knowledge that although he is definitely in ‘a world of sh*t’, he’s going to be alright. It is almost an uplifting moment, which does come as something of a surprise for a film, which, while being extremely thought provoking, is almost unrelentingly depressing, ...
...making ‘easy’ films and this is certainly no exception – the viewer is given a no-holds-barred view of the life cycle of a recruit in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. The first half of the film deals exclusively with recruit training in South Carolina, and opens with repeated views of the classic symbol of a soldier’s life, the ritual head-shaving that all recruits undergo. You see face after face, black, white, whatever: ...

Flodum 11.06.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

Although various films have explored Vietnam, war is generally a subject for which filmmakers can approach differently - such as Terrence Malick's philosophical and haunting Thin Red Line, which shows us not just the happening of war, but the men who fought it. With Stanley Kubrick's 1987 picture it is split into two parts, the training and the war – and even though the second half isn't quite as interesting, the film as a whole is still a very strong ...
...The first half covers the intense boot camp training that the Marine recruits have to go through before heading off to Vietnam. Similar to last year's Tigerland, the film depicts the harshness of what these people have to go through, especially having to tolerate the yelling and remarks of Sergeant Hartman, who just makes the film humorous and serious at the same time. There are several recruits, who are focused on, but the main ones are Gomer Pyle, ...

Trino 19.09.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

Vietnam was a part of American history that a lot of American’s would like to forget, but for an awful lot of young men had their lives changed forever after being a part of this war. This film gives an insight into the Vietnam conflict from the point of view of young Marines. The film is actually two films that have been neatly woven into one production. The first hour shows how a platoon of recruits to the US Marine Corps are turned from ...
...Sergeant takes them through their training with all the grit and determination that you would expect in a military establishment. At times there are some very amusing lines, but this only masks (and does not hide) the fact that many of these men are likely to die in conflict and this training is the only thing that might save them. The harshness of the training is matched only by the amount of swearing in the film and the number of crude comments ...

daseaford 11.07.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

Stanley Kubrik's Full Metal Jacket is an uncompromisingly bleak study of the horrors or war. This is no 'glossy' Saving Private Ryan' experience, but a movie which asks the viewer plenty of questions and offers no answers, no hope and has little meaning. This is a masterpiece of modern cinema and one which I doubt this review can do justice, but here goes... Full Metal Jacket is split into two distinct parts. The first features THE most realistic ...
...The first section of Full Metal Jacket is enormously powerful, but an extremely unpleasant viewing experience. It is harsh, cold and uncompromising, completely devoid of hope and effectively a completely numbing experience. Drill Instructor Hartman is a completely loathsome creature, made even more so as you know that he is not just a figment of some director's imagination, but that there are scores of DI Hartman's all over the US, sadisticly hounding ...

wampyrii 12.05.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

...jungle. The film is full of very disturbing sites such as the suicide of Private Pyle before being shipped out to War. The Twitching of bodies after being shot also leaves a very unpleasant thought in your head. There are also normal scenes in the film. It shows the easy living of the journalists within the Marine corps. How the news is altered to make the soldiers feel better exposes the harsh realism that the Viet Nam war was being fought amongst ...
...Vietnamese girls that are selling themselves to the American G.I.s are funny. In broken English and very unsexy dancing they try to seduce soldiers into various acts for “5 dollar”. It shows that wherever there are lots of men and few women, the oldest profession in the world is rife. There is an interesting scene later in the film that brings into play the racist side of the war. A Vietnamese Prostitute will not sleep with one of the ...

andycharger 09.05.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

'Full Metal Jacket' is far and away the greatest of all Vietnam films, the only one free from cant, humbug, melodrama, hysteria, mythologising or racist self-pity. Kubrick's film is more clear-eyed than those of Coppola, Cimino, Stone et al because he is under no delusion about America - he doesn't see Vietnam as some Fall from a mythic Eden, but a logical consequence of the American way. Because Kubrick's film isn't a narrative of inevitable defeat, ...
...duality (ambiguity, humanity) is ruthlessly expunged. Joker may say he feels glad to be alive, but the enduring image, a somnambulistic army of black figures marching in a dark, burning, never-ending landscape, is one of Hell, not the ersatz inferno of your average Vietnam movie, but the banal hell of Reagan's America, joylessly, unstoppably globalising. This is a Vietnam America won. A lot of people, even so-called Kubrick fans, don't like 'Jacket'. ...

chilledbudwei2er 02.10.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

...And that talent especially helped Full Metal Jacket. Like everyone of Kubrick's films that I've loved, I started off not liking this. It wasn't so much the content, or the ability of the actors. I just never completely understood it as a film. But on the basis of reputation, I tried it again. And I was easily persuaded. Full Metal Jacket, based on Gustav Hasford and the novel The Short Timers is divided into two seperate sections, the first dealing ...
...cell phone tower (!) Full Metal Jacket is a great Kubrick film. Sure, it's several paces off 2001 or Clockwork Orange, but overall the film is very much like Clockwork, at least in tone. The film doesn't quite match 2001, Clockwork Orange and Paths of Glory (which as a war film is far superior) but is definately one of the great Kubrick films. ...

everyplatewebreak 04.02.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

I purchased 'Full Metal Jacket' after hearing little snippets of praise for it, and of course having seen some of Stanley's other gems. Vietnam movies fascinate me and Kubrick did a masterly job on this one. 'Full Metal Jacket' seems to have come into being thanks to a few sources. Firstly the novel by someone Gustav, second Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, third Michael Herr's novel 'Dispatches' (who co-wrote the screenplay, I just found out; that's where ...
...ie. the 'Hand Job' story and the 'Born To Kill/Peace Icon' helmet, the crazy door gunner: 'You just don't lead them so much, ha ha ha'). The movie is divided into two distinct parts, basic Marine training, and 'combat corresponding' in Vietnam. The first features much military brutality (as does the second, I suppose) , in an organisational manner, along with absolutely BEAUTIFUL cinematography (bold sunsets/sunrises, gentle fades, slow pans etc). ...

mookielidl 15.02.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

Actors: Lee Irmy, Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio. This film is set initially at a training camp for Marines. The drill instructor (played by Lee Imry) is a vicious thug who takes great delight in abusing his cadets. The language is particularly coarse but some of the quotes are quite funny at times. I have been told that Irmy initially provided technical information to the actor who was playing the part of the drill instrucor. However, it was ...
...D'Onofrio plays the unfortunate Private Pile (the nickname given to him by the instructor). At the beginning we see Pile being confronted by the drill sergeant. Drill sergeant: What's your name fatbody? Pile: Lawrence ... Drill sergeant: Lawrence what? Lawrence of Arabia? Are you some kind of f@*+ing royalty? Only sailors and faggots are called Lawrence. Pile eventually cracks up under the pressure of not being able to keep up with his comrades. ...

oclumhain 06.03.2001 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

The first half of this film is inspired. The second half is exceedingly average. I'm a great fan of Kubrick and this film bears all his trademarks. Lots of wide shots and perfect framing etc. It is also very detached as most of his films are. This makes good filmmaking for the first half which is set in the marine core training camp. This half of the film is funny and frightening. In the second half the film looses pace. The direction is too emotionally ...

gsplat 08.08.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

I purchased 'Full Metal Jacket' after hearing little snippets of praise for it, and of course having seen some of Stanley's other gems. I was unable to hire it out (all damaged or something) so I just went and bought it. As it turned out it wasn't such a bad decision. The movie is divided into two distinct parts, basic Marine training, and 'combat corresponding' in Vietnam. The first features much military brutality (as does the second, I suppose) ...
...(bold sunsets/sunrises, gentle fades, slow pans etc). Kubrick does not rush things, the pace is steady and well-measured. The second half of the movie largely takes place in a city in Vietnam, maybe Hue or something, I don't really know. Contrasted so clearly alongside the first half of the movie, actual combat seems something of a cinematic disappointment. The surroundings feel staged and small and there is a severe lack of scale. There are no bodies ...

Supernaut 23.11.2000 · Read full review
Review of Full Metal Jacket (DVD)