Full Metal Jacket

November 2, 2005

Rated: R Runtime: 111 min Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Full Metal Jacket is one of our alltime favorite movies. There are better overall war movies not the least of which is Patton. There are certainly movies with better battle sequences such as We Were Soldiers. And when it comes to Vietnam movies, most people would consider Apocolypse Now better and the story of that war to have already been told many times prior to Stanley Kubrick bring Full Metal Jacket along in the late 80’s. However, this is one of those movies that if we catch it on cable, forget anything else getting done for a couple of hours, we’re gonna sit and watch it. That is the sign of a truly classic movie.

Actually what you get here are two distinctly different stories involving the same characters. The first half of the movie we follow the men through basic training on Parris Island where maggots are turned into Marines. We then pick up with the grunts in Vietnam and follow them through some action.

Full Metal Jacket stars Matthew Modine who does an excellent job here as Private Joker. However, the real show stealer here is R. Lee Ermey starring as one of our absolute all time favorite characters, Gunnery Sargent Hartman, the drill instructor. The man is an absolutely craftsman of profanity! Kubrick had originally cast someone else as the D.I. and hired Ermey, a true Vietnam era Parris Island instructor, as a consultant. When asked to demonstrate how a Drill Instructor might address a group of fresh recruits, Ermey proceeded to do his thing for 15 minutes straight and Kubrick decided why not use the real deal. And yes, we can quote almost every line of it, but we wont.

This is quite simply the type of movie we watch over and over even though we know every line by heart. We’re not even particularly huge Stanley Kubrick fans, but this is a movie that typically strikes a chord with guys. It really tickles that Y chromosone somehow. We give Full Metal Jacket 5 stars only because we dont offer 6 stars. It belongs in every man’s DVD collection. If you don’t like it, you’re probably the type of guy who doesn’t even have the common courtesy to give a reach around.

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 5 Stars, Action, Adam Baldwin, Arliss Howard, DVD, Drama, Ed O'Ross, Matthew Modine, R, R. Lee Ermey