Full Metal Jacket
Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam opus was severely overshadowed in its time of release by Oliver Stone’s Platoon the year before, but there can be no doubt that this is the superior film in every way and deserved multiple 1987 Oscars. It’s also my opinion that despite the brilliant fast-paced opening 45 minutes in boot camp (and how despite receiving a Golden Globe nod, R. Lee Ermey was ROBBED of a Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor), the second half of the film showing Joker in country is just as good IF not better than the first half. Here we get some brilliant stuff: The two hooker scenes (“Only fuck the ones that cough”). The press room scene. Everything involving Animal Mother, especially his final charge against the sniper in Hue City. The tail gunner scene (“Anyone who runs is V.C. Anyone who stands still is a well-disciplined V.C.!”). The film crew scene with Surfin Bird. The soldiers standing over the bodies making comments. And so on. Perhaps the most amazing thing throughout the film is its disarming sense of humor, oftentimes pitch black, that actually makes the viewer smile more often than in most films of this sort, while also getting down to serious business as well. As for the cast, Ermey and Adam Baldwin are forever associated with their iconic roles here, and Modine gives his career-best to date as the liberal Joker trying to make his way thru the hell of war. Only D’Onofrio (as brilliant as the others here, if not moreso), has gone on to have a fairly well-rounded career and attained some separation from the association with his Pvt. Pyle role. Arliss Howard’s Cowboy is a wussy incompetent weasel, but then the actor has never succeeded at playing a manly man. Dorian Harewood’s Eightball makes a good laid-back buddy figure to the intense Animal Mother. Kevin Major Howard’s Rafterman as well makes a worthy sidekick to Joker. Joker’s final moral dilemma is as gripping as can be imagined, and the ending, with the surviving characters showing defiance to their environment by singing the Mickey Mouse Club, might be the genre’s most uplifting final scene ever. While perhaps a step or two behind Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, this is still one of the two or three greatest war movies ever made…
10/10