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.
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
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
Full Metal Jacket:
Full Metal Jacket
I was very much unsatisfied with this product for one simple reason. It came in full screen format. I ordered it along with two other DVD titles.
Both of the other movies came in wide-screen versions. I only buy movies in wide-screen. Perhaps it was my own fault for not being more specific, but I don't recall having an option. I am aware that I could have returned it. I decided instead to give it away as a Christmas present rather than go through the headache and expense of... more info
Poor Return Policy:
The initial delivery time was great, very fast. However, when I had a problem with the dvd and sent it back for an exchange, I did not receive another dvd and am considering a full refund. The responses to my emails were not timely and a new dvd was assured to be sent but have not seen it in about a month. With so many choices out there, stay away from this place.
Full Metal Jacket:
This movie is one of the saddest movies about the Vietnam war ever. I think what impacted me most was the choice of music for several of the scenes. I don't like the "blood and guts" movies, but this one made a statement and the music was so very sad and in a minor key and it made the movie a visual and auditory event.
Another brutally honest depiction of Kubrick's vision...:
I love me some Stanley Kubrick. I just wanted to say that, because in all honesty I can't think of a single director who has ever worked that has come close to delivering what Kubrick has delivered to cinema. Film after film, moment after moment, emotion after emotion, Kubrick is flawless and his films are as complete and as unique to him as they come. No director has come close to delivering as consistently as Stanley Kubrick, and no director has a style as unique to himself as Kubrick (sure, many... more info
