Full Metal Jacket - 1987
It seems to me that viewers of Full Metal Jacket typically fall into one of several camps. There are those who ride or die for “the boot camp stuff,” i.e. the first 45 minutes of the picture. Many of these folks will say you can pretty much walk away after the runtime passes the hour mark. (Or better yet, once R. Lee Ermey’s visage no longer dominates the screen). Then, there are others who believe the film does not wane in its back half. The best of the latter thinkers see all the early happenings as character-building and setup for the actual battles on the streets of Hue that follow. I suppose there could be further subdivisions as well. Those who see it all on equal footing. And maybe even rare souls who just can’t get enough of Kubrick’s anti-war propaganda takes and creatively horrific staging of the all-too-familiar fighting in the third act.
Look, I’ll just show my cards plainly. I’m largely a member of the first ilk, though I dip my toes in the second a time or two. Quite simply, it’s just impossible for the back end to reach the stratospheric heights that Gunnery Sergeant Hartman takes us to in the opening. Personally, I find R. Lee Ermey’s performance to be among the 25 or so best I’ve ever seen. His inflections and affectation. The constant motor-mouthing. The utterly debauched arsenal of filth and vitriol spewing from his lips at helpless and woeful grunts is completely unique. When you dig a little further and determine that so many of his lines were ad-libbed on the spot, it boggles the mind.
Contrast this with Modine’s seeming level-headedness and the sweeping character arc of Vincent D’Onofrio’s “Gomer Pyle,” and it’s a real three-ringed circus. Full Metal Jacket is one of those pictures where the very first viewing really takes the cake. For the events which transpire to conclude the boot camp section are not easily unseen. Even so, on revisit, the incredible craft and performances of these principals is yet again the big take away from my entire viewing experience.
Yet, this final hour is not without its charms (or, horrors, as it were). I’m certainly nowhere near the first to notice it, but so much of Kubrick’s staging here is as much in the horror genre as the war drama one. The completion of the Pyle arc, in one of the more indelible sequences from the era, is a masterclass in this stuff. Shot framing. Choice of lighting. The works. But this returns again in the sniper finale scene as well. In this way, even though the battle sequences are of a piece with other pictures around the time (Apocalypse Now, Platoon, etc.) and are therefore the least distinctive, they still retain Kubrick’s patented visual flair.
Beyond that, there are still great characters hanging around. We get the rise of Animal Mother (a more nuanced Capt. Bob Barnes in my reading), Cowboy revisited, and some snarky media folks. Which actually points me to what I really love in this section. Where I would give the edge to Kubrick’s work over, say, Platoon the year before is in the framing of his central conceit. For both it is clear that it is the “duality of man” in focus. Here, however, it’s best represented by a helmet plastered with the phrase “Born to Kill” alongside a peace sign. (Modine’s lines referencing this are tremendous).
The pointlessness of it all is then driven home by just a remarkable scene where soldiers are sounding off for the camera on what this war really is deep down, what it’s accomplishing, how the Vietnamese are perceiving the US’ assistance, and much more. It’s an extended moment that features interviews which would never run in any kind of published war propaganda materials, but it is all the better for it. One character, decrying the US dying for South Vietnamese who don’t seem interested in the conflict in the first place, notes, “They’d rather be alive, then free.” Another wonders aloud why the locals can’t fight this battle for themselves.
By the end, Kubrick had accomplished his goal - an incisive, yet entertaining look at the good and evil dwelling in the heart of humankind. Yet he did so with an absolutely hair-on-fire Gunnery Sergeant, a war writer who’s slipping, and a total hoorah dynamo (looking at you, Adam Baldwin), capturing so eloquently the ever-eroding loss of optimism and purpose that seemed to lie at the heart of the Vietnam conflict for so many who served.
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