What is it?
The 1987 British-American war movie Full Metal Jacket.
What is it about?
This is how Rotten Tomatoes describes this movie:
Stanley Kubrick’s return to filmmaking after a seven-year hiatus, this film crystallizes the experience of the Vietnam War by concentrating on a group of raw Marine volunteers.
Based on Gustav Hasford’s novel The Short Timers, the film’s first half details the volunteers’ harrowing boot-camp training under the profane, power-saw guidance of drill instructor Sgt. Hartman (R. Lee Ermey, a real-life drill instructor whose performance is one of the most terrifyingly realistic on record).
Part two takes place in Nam, as seen through the eyes of the now thoroughly indoctrinated marines.
Ironically, Full Metal Jacket was filmed almost entirely in England.
~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Final Thoughts
I finally finished watching this movie yesterday for the first time with my dad (who was in a marine corps).
This movie was not as good as I had expected, it had a good start with the basic training parts of the movie probably being the best parts of the movie in my opinion and in the opinion of my dad, and R. Lee Ermey was probably the best part of the movie as the character Gunnery Sergeant Hartman; but the rest of the movie was not as good as the beginning in my opinion.
Here is probably the best scene in the movie:
The sniper part of the movie at the end was my second favorite part of the movie.
The movie did do something interesting by showing a less sanitized version how things and people can be during war and during military service, which is not common in movies, so that was a surprise.
My dad felt that they did a pretty good job during the basic training parts of the movie that reminded him of some of his experiences back when he was in basic training (drill instructors would sometimes beat up recruits and even recruits would beat up fellow recruits sometimes if they all got punished for their mistakes, racial slurs, cursing, a lot of yelling, humiliation, et cetera).
My dad probably liked this movie more than I did, and he rates it as a good movie.
The end,
-John Jr
John Jr's Blog 