Movie Review: Full Metal Jacket

Rating: 4 Stars

from Little White Lies

This may be a strange statement but as I was watching Full Metal Jacket, I did not feel like I was watching a war movie.

There were all the elements of a war movie in Kubrick’s 1987 classic, but I genuinely felt I was being presented with an unfiltered view of American culture and politics during the 60s.

Kubrick is known for challenging conventional storytelling methods, and Full Metal Jacket is not told by conventional means. Even in the film’s final climactic moments, Kubrick’s script wasn’t building toward a resolution.

Rather it’s an exploration of humanity, “the duality of man”, as the film’s protagonist states. Nicknamed Private Joker and played wonderfully by Matthew Modine, Joker is a journalist with the duty of propagandizing the war efforts to motivate American soldiers.

Kubrick’s camera glides through war-torn Vietnam and the bewildered faces of the marines who now occupy its treacherous grounds. There exists a moral ambiguity in Kubrick’s script where all the characters are innately flawed. Despite their obvious flaws in logic or pure arrogance and lack of intelligence, there is an authenticity that palpitates throughout the soul of these characters.

While Kubrick’s Marine Corps Vietnam War musings could be dismissed as meaningless lines of callous masculine bravado, I believe there’s a layered message in the madness.

That same callous bravado continues in American culture today where some ignore it, others are frustrated by it, and there are those who embrace it. Thus exists a tug of war for what the American identity should actually capture.

I felt aided by having no preconceived notions about the film going in, so the jarring nature of scenes that lacked continuity didn’t bother me. There are scenes at the moment that don’t seem purposeful, but they build a context and psychology for the characters to maneuver through as the film progresses.

It is the first half hour of the film is a masterful short film in its own rite. The young Marines begin boot camp with their heads being shaved and their identities being stripped. They also meet a drill instructor, Sgt. Hartman (Lee Ermey), who strips the young men of their dignity by eviscerating each recruit with a myriad of hilarious ad-libbed insults.

In the opening scenes, we are introduced to misfit recruit Pvt. Pyle who Hartman particularly harasses for his subpar performance in training. Vincent D’Onofrio settles into the most sinister role in the film with an impactful aura. Once again, I believe Kubrick has conceived a role that triggers a touchpoint in the human and American psyche that we struggle to cope with today.

I particularly found Modine’s performance as Joker to capture the essence of what Kubrick is getting at. He is caught in the midst of American idealism crossed with manifest destiny and the dark humor that lies within American nationalism being unbecoming of that very idealism.

The film does well to show that there is no good side or bad side in this war, there are sides. These are human beings trained to kill. For what purpose? No one is sure. While I’d assume Kubrick’s message is intended to be political, I believe Full Metal Jacket asks more fundamentally important questions than political ones.

In the beginning, there is one purpose, uniformity. A desire for everyone to achieve an equal goal and live under one collective mindset. In practice though, individuals tend to show their true nature. Whilst being bound together by the same principles, the individual personality tends to drive emotions and decisions in moments of tension and stress. Once doubt has crept in, we begin to question that collective mindset that was ingrained in us. What are we fighting for? Who are we fighting?

At the end of the day, we end up fighting ourselves, and by then we are in too deep. But when there is no way, the only way is forward.