*MAJOR SPOILERS*
This was a hard one Vaders.. I’m not talking about trying to figure out if it was good or bad, I’m saying that this was just plain hard to watch. Full disclosure, this review might contain some pretty hefty topics. You’ve been warned.
Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 drama/war film directed and produced by the once great Stanley Kubrick. The film stars Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, and Vincent D’Onofrio, as the storyline follows a platoon of U.S. Marines going through basic training as well as their experiences as Marines in the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War.
Now although I went extremely hard on 2001: A Space Odyssey, that won’t be the case for this classic. Having seen only half of Saving Private Ryan, I guess you could say that this was my first real war film. Now I’d like to start off with things I thought were fantastic about this film and then move on to what I didn’t feel was that great. This film was very difficult for me to watch, and I’m going to try my hardest to get this review out of my head and onto the screen.
So lets start off with visuals since Kubrick is incredibly well known for his visuals. This film looked great and was extremely immersive. Kubrick did such a great job setting up the first act to the point where you actually felt as if you were there. He does a great job putting you in the character’s shoes, and this really helps with the immersion of the first and third act. The sets looked fantastic, and to find out that the city of Hue was filmed in London blew my freaking mind! Kubrick is a film god when it comes to his visuals, and they hold up great when compared to today’s standards. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought this film was a documentary at times. Kubrick definitely knows what he is doing.
Now although I stated that 2001: A Space Odyssey had a fantastic soundtrack, I felt that Full Metal Jacket was on and off when it came to the music. There are times when the music (rock music) is playing and it completely takes you out of the film, and there are also times when the music (score) adds such great tension that you are literally on the edge of your seat nervously gnawing away at your fingernails. I swear, the score to this film was so eerie and suspenseful that it had me sweating while watching the film. There are also some great moments where there is no score or soundtrack, and I felt that just added an entire new layer of fear and stress to the film. It was fantastic. The sound design in this movie was phenomenal, as to be expected. Every bullet was loud, and every bang was heard. There was a great scene that we see this demonstrated extremely well in, and that was around at the beginning of the third act right before Eightball dies. As soon as Eightball is killed by the sniper, the platoon opens fire and Cowboy tries to get them to stop firing, yet they can’t hear him because the gunfire is too loud. I loved this, as this was a true testament to Kubrick’s fantastic sound design.
Now lets get onto the parts that I felt Kubrick didn’t do so well in. First off, the pacing and general development of this film (and most of his films, to be honest) are just terrible. I don’t know what it is, but Kubrick loves to have three distinct acts to each film, with each of them being very different from the one before or after it. This is seen a lot in Kubrick’s work, mostly in 2001. I absolutely can’t stand this way of storytelling as it confuses the audience, and loses the flow in pace. What Kubrick should have done was make this film into three different movies since each act was basically its own short film. Like come on, man.. that isn’t the ideal way of storytelling. Because of this one flaw, so many things suffer like the pacing, character development, tone, and general feel of the movie. Sure we saw some great progression with Modine’s character Joker, but people like Animal Mother and Eightball have little or no backstory and there isn’t a huge feeling of loss when characters like Eightball die. I felt the first act was great, the second act was incredibly boring, and the third act was fantastic, but the fact that I have to separate this movie into three sections shows that the film doesn’t stand well together, and that’s what I feel is the biggest flaw in this film.
The last thing I want to touch on before closing up my review is the tone in this movie. It’s dark.. like real dark. There are times in this film where I felt that my own life was in danger, or just scared to see what the human race has become. This movie bares it all. The f-bomb is dropped in almost every sentence, you see people blow off their own heads, prostitution, and the worst being a young girl begging for Joker to kill her. This movie weighs in hard, and I felt that this added a lot to the film. Although it wasn’t pretty, it was the honest truth about what happens in war, and how disgusting the Vietnam War truly was. The film almost felt like an anti-war type of film as it showed the absolute worst of the worst in this kind of warfare. There are some great hidden meanings throughout this film that I just can’t go into detail with (since there is so much). But the little things like the troops singing the Mickey Mouse March after murdering women and children, and the gunner in the helicopter shooting rice farmers really just show the disgusting truth of war.
So to wrap things up, I thought Full Metal Jacket was one of Kubrick’s better films, and to be honest I was pretty torn on what to give this film. Although many will go against my decision, I decided to give Full Metal Jacket an “Alright” on theVade Review Bar. The film had outstanding visuals and audio design, but Kubrick’s odd way of storytelling bogs down the movie and ultimately hurts the film’s pacing, character development, and much more. The acting in the film was great, and the tone literally put you back into the Vietnam War in 1968 (when the second and third act take place). This was an extremely hard film to watch, but I felt it was an absolute great representation of what war really is. So in conclusion, although Full Metal Jacket had some great moments, it was ultimately three short films tied together by one thing.. Kubrick. And I’m sorry, but that just isn’t good enough.
