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List Price: $19.96 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 16155
Released: June 12, 2001 |
| Our Price: $6.95 |
| Used Price: $2.21 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
The story of an 18-year-old marine recruit named Private Joker - from his carnage-and-machismo boot camp to his climactic involvement in the heavy fighting in Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive.
Description of Full Metal Jacket:
Stanley Kubrick's 1987, penultimate film seemed to a lot of people to be contrived and out of touch with the '80s vogue for such intensely realistic portrayals of the Vietnam War as Platoon and The Deer Hunter. Certainly, Kubrick gave audiences plenty of reason to wonder why he made the film at all: essentially a two-part drama that begins on a Parris Island boot camp for rookie Marines and abruptly switches to Vietnam (actually shot on sound stages and locations near London), Full Metal Jacket comes across as a series of self-contained chapters in a story whose logical and thematic development is oblique at best. Then again, much the same was said about Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a masterwork both enthralled with and satiric about the future's role in the unfinished business of human evolution. In a way, Full Metal Jacket is the wholly grim counterpart of 2001. While the latter is a truly 1960s film, both wide-eyed and wary, about the intertwining of progress and isolation (ending in our redemption, finally, by death), Full Metal Jacket is a cynical, Reagan-era view of the 1960s' hunger for experience and consciousness that fulfilled itself in violence. Lee Ermey made film history as the Marine drill instructor whose ritualized debasement of men in the name of tribal uniformity creates its darkest angel in a murderous half-wit (Vincent D'Onofrio). Matthew Modine gives a smart and savvy performance as Private Joker, the clowning, military journalist who yearns to get away from the propaganda machine and know firsthand the horrific revelation of the front line. In Full Metal Jacket, depravity and fulfillment go hand in hand, and it's no wonder Kubrick kept his steely distance from the material to make the point. --Tom Keogh
Full Metal Jacket Reviews:
Different take on Vietnam 
2009-11-26 - While `Full Metal Jacket' is a Vietnam War film, don't go in looking for another `Platoon'. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, the key to understanding `Full Metal Jacket' is to realise that this is a Kubrick film first and a war film second. Both boot camp and battlefield merely serve as a backdrop for the usual Kubrick themes and ideas, and the final product bears more similarity to `Clockwork Orange' than to other war movies.
Being a Stanley Kubrick film, it goes without saying that the technical aspects of `Full Metal Jacket' are almost flawless. Kubrick makes excellent use of pans, long shots, close-ups, and point-of-view, and some of the battle scenes in the second half are given realism by the use of hand-held camerawork. Kubrick also does a good job in set design; using a British army base to substitute for US Marine boot camp was a no-brainer, but amazingly a dilapidated London gasworks was very realistically transformed into the Vietnamese city of Hue.
As has been often noted, the film is split into two parts, and in some ways is almost two independent films. The first half, dealing with Marine boot camp, is exceptional. R Lee Emery's performance as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is terrifyingly realistic, and has to be seen to be believed. His interactions with his "maggots", especially his relentless abuse of Private Pyle, are at once hilarious and disturbing. And Vincent Donofrio as the misfit-turned-psychopath Pyle is also outstanding.
However, the brilliance of the first half means the second part of the film can fall a bit flat. One big problem is that Hartman and Pyle are the two most interesting characters in the movie, but are absent from the second half, meaning Joker has to carry this part of the film. But Joker is a fairly weak protagonist; he seems designed as an "everyman" that we can identify with, but his very ordinariness means he is often overshadowed by more interesting characters such as Hartman, Pyle, and (in the second half) Animal Mother. He's really just a pair of eyes through which we see the war and its effects on men.
One way in which `Full Metal Jacket' differs from other war films is that it doesn't have an explicit message. In typical Kubrick fashion, he refuses to settle for easy answers; he presents the characters and events as they are, and forces us to draw our own conclusions. On one hand, the absence of any "pass the bucket" flag-waving or preachy anti-war posturing is a welcome relief. But on the other, the rather detached and academic approach of the film can make it difficult to engage with. While there are some powerful scenes, `Full Metal Jacket' lacks the nightmarish feel of `Apocalypse Now', or the strong emotional pull of something like `The Deer Hunter'.
In all, `Full Metal Jacket' is a typical Kubrick film, so if you've seen any of his other movies, you'll probably already know whether you'll love it or hate it. Those expecting a gung-ho action fest or a film with a clear "point" might be disappointed, but open-minded war movie fans should find this a unique and challenging take on Vietnam.
A Word About Aspect Ratios 
2009-11-23 - Not a review, just a word about aspect ratios.
A lot of movies in the 80's were shot in a "soft" or "open matte" format, which means they were shot full frame (1.33:1) and later matted by cinema projectionists to fit the screen (remember that cinema screens used to be much more disparate in size and ratio than they are today). This practice also facilitated transfer to home video, since the negative was already in a full-frame format. It is a huge falacy that all films were shot in a "fixed" or "closed matte" format and then later panned and scanned for home video. You'd be surprized how many movies were actually shot full frame and soft matted in the theater (Schindler's List and Top Gun to name but two). The thing to remember when regarding movies shot in the seventies, eighties, and early nineties (or every Stanley Kubrick movie ever made) is that "widescreen format" or "theatrical aspect ratio" is not always synonymous with "original aspect ratio."
The original aspect ratio for FMJ is 1.33:1. The 1.85:1 version presented here will fill the entire screen of your 16:9 television, but it will do so by cropping out the top and bottom of the original frame.
Most realistic war movie of all time
2009-10-11 - This is my favorite war movie of all time. It feels more like a documentary than a movie. Their depiction of boot camp is as brutal I expect it was 20 years ago. The war scenes are so realistic you will be ducking to dodge the bullets. This entire movie is interesting not a bad part in it. For those of you with little ones at home I warn you this movie has a ton of very foul language in it so you might to watch it after the kids go to sleep.
Dehumanizing effect of the military
2009-07-28 -
This movie deserves a 5 star for the first half showing the dehumanizing effect of the marine boot camp and how it turns peaceful civilian recruits into angry, killing machines. All traits that are scoffed at in civilian life including gratuitous violence, rampant sexism, mindless conformity and mean aggressiveness are rewarded during one's stint in boot camp and training. The second half of the movie dealing with the depiction of the war has been previously seen in several other movies, but the boot camp depiction is dead-on. As some other reviewer has mentioned, the actual boot camp is tougher with possible more instances of physical abuse by DIs. This movie forces one to ask what effect army training has on a recruit and how different military attitude is compared to civilian life. It is an oft-quoted cliche that military training "builds character" - it really depends on how one defines character. If dormant rage, hatred for difference (and people different than the norm) and herd mentality are hallmarks of character then yes. However if independent, innovative thought, gentleness and tolerance are how one defines character, then no military training is not the solution. It has taken several years for some fellow army buddies to discard the rage and aggression and return back to civilian life. If you want a good view of what military thought and training are like, watch this movie.
War Movies 
2009-06-13 - A good war movie, but for me not the classic some portray it as being.
