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Bookmark this pageFull Metal Jacket (1987)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
The first half of Kubrick's movie steers clear of South East Asia altogether, focusing on the dehumanising training programme undergone by a group of novice US Marines. Then, after a suitably melodramatic bloodbath, the action switches to 'Nam, where star recruit Pvt Joker (Modine) soon tires of his behind-the-lines job as military journalist and provokes his CO into sending him forth into the shit. Black but obvious irony abounds, madness and racist bigotry are rampant, and a muddled moral message arises from the mire of a sprawling second half when the cynical, nominally heroic Joker finally learns to kill. None of which is to suggest that the film is bad; despite a certain stereotyping and predictability there are moments of gripping interest. Finally, however, Kubrick's direction is as steely cold and manipulative as the régime it depicts, and we never really get to know, let alone care about, the hapless recruits on view.Author: GA
User reviews of this film
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- Gort said...
- Posted on Jan 15 2011 08:22 This movie has one of the rarest portrayal of real psychology of soldiers and because of that I appreciate it especially after those purified war movies like "Saving private Ryan" and "Band of brothers" which tend to portray soldiers as innocent lost boys.
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- B Thom said...
- Posted on Sep 21 2010 19:08 This review is just trying to be different. The movie is precise and flawless. There is a reason the lines of the drill Sargent stick with you forever, the reason is excellence and this movie is filled with it. Watch it.
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- john said...
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Posted on Jun 08 2010 08:54
See this masterpiece, if you haven’t. This review is an insult to the memory of a great artist. You can parse Vietnam any way you like, and certainly Kubrick pushes many horror-of-the-Vietnam-war buttons, but his vision is clearly universal.
The first part of the film is really about the uses of language and various disciplines to harness and control the powers of young men to do the biddings of Power. You see that the gibberish of drill sergeants is purposeful and effective. It’s all coolly detached ― until it isn’t. The second part is a voyage into fire and death. Kubrick seems to suggest that the voyage is half-feared/half-welcomed, though his vision is somewhat ironic. But how else can you frame the stupidities of Power when on the ground it pointlessly snuffs out the lives of half-comprehending people? It’s as if Kubrick ennobles the soldiers through his peerless technique.
As for characterization, the characters are fully human and each interesting in different ways. The Joker is a young untried man, boxed in by things he knows are dubious at best. What does he really know? What can he really do? Hold onto his sense of self and march into the conflagration with his buddies. Modine is perfect as the Joker. His smile, a haunting ‘no’ to the craziness that is engulfing him… - Report as inappropriate
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- Dan said...
- Posted on Jul 21 2008 18:51 I think it's a cop-out to have given the film such a low rating when the director's intentions were clearly to have in force some of the very things you claim detracts from it (racist bigotry, killing of innocents, dehumanization). That is the nature of war. There's no use in sugar-coating something that is rightfully, as you claim, "steely cold."
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- Quick Ben said...
- Posted on May 24 2008 19:38 I've said it before, I'll say it again. This website obviously dose not watch the films it's reviewing. Every film of any significance has been given a bad review.
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- H.Limmen said...
- Posted on Jan 29 2008 19:09 This reviewer has got it all wrong, because you get to know the main character, and care about him. And to say this, what a pathetic r"eview". Stop making reviews. Just... stop.
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- Kurt Munro said...
- Posted on Sep 10 2007 01:30 What a joke of a review, for a joke of a website.
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Cast & crew
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Producer: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Ermey, Dorian Harewood, Arliss Howard full cast
Genre(s): War
Duration: 116 mins
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