Full Metal Jacket

I watched the movie Full Metal Jacket directed by Stanley Kubrick. This movie was described to me as a classic war movie that shows all aspects of war. I would defiantly agree with this description. The movie is focused on one marine nicknamed “joker”. It follows him through basic training until he is actually fighting in Vietnam. The first half of the movie is all about the hardships of training camp while the second shows Joker doing fieldwork as a soldier reporter.

This movie had some very graphic images that even I cringed at and I have seen my share of gore and violence. One of these is a scene in which one of the marine recruits goes crazy in the training barracks. He is bad at everything at almost everyone hates him because he gets all the other marines punished for being so bad. He ends up killing his drill sergeant and then committing suicide. Another image that is hard to watch is two characters get shot four times each and scream out in agony. They simply lie in the middle of a courtyard while an enemy sniper continues to fire them. It really puts the brutality of war into perspective.

One thing that I did not really like about this film was the fact that the ending was anticlimactic. Although the squad kills the enemy sniper and takes revenge there is no big mission or trial at the end. They just simply go into a building and kill the sniper.

One thing about the main character that is important to pick up on is that he believes in the duality of humanity. He suggests that humans both kill and make peace. This can be seen through the wearing of a peace sign on his jacket (which would have been very controversial in the Vietnam war with all the things going on the home front) and by his writing the text “born to kill” on his helmet.

I would highly recommend watching this movie it gives particular insight to the process of training camp and how hard it is. This movie has the themes of revenge and loss of innocence. Revenge can be seen when the squad kills the sniper. A loss of innocence can be seen when Joker first experiences real battle and sees his fellow soldiers die right before his eyes. I would give this movie an 8 out of 10.