Full Metal Jacket
1987 · Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Original language: English
- drama
- war
The story
A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the U.S.-Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.
What it’s like
Cold, hard fluorescent light fills the barracks and the sterile training bays of Parris Island, all steel bunks, shaved heads and scrubbed concrete, while the second half turns to the chalky ruin of Hue under flat, overcast daylight and drifting smoke. Kubrick's camera holds long, symmetrical compositions with a clinical stillness, often locking off on a figure in the middle of a corridor or a bleak landscape and letting the frame feel airless. The score is sparse: tolling bells, a restrained pulse of drums, and the Rolling Stones and Nancy Sinatra on the soundtrack jarring against the grim images. The vibe is cold, bitter and detached, with a rising dread that lands in violence that is sudden and brutal, including a grim, unflinching close-up of a shooting and sustained war-zone bloodshed and gunfire, plus harsh verbal cruelty, profanity and a prostitute scene. Its emotional register is distanced and ironic, following a wry, watchful young marine as the men around him are stripped down and remade into killers. Pacing is deliberate in its first act, then tightens into jagged, disorienting combat. It suits viewers who want a bleak, intellectually rigorous war film and can handle sustained brutality; it is not for anyone seeking something gentle.
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