Full Metal Jacket (1987) ****1/2

When I first saw Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) as a teenager, I mostly enjoyed watching the first 45 minutes, in which R. Lee Ermey's Gny. Sgt. Hartman scarily but hilariously berates and dehumanizes privates in his boot camp. It's a brilliant performance (in particular, the first seven minutes—minus the buzzcuts—is a hell of a cold open) and the dialogue is unforgettable. I couldn't get enough of it. Not that I ever wanted to serve before seeing the film, but the first section of FMJ cemented that I definitely did not.

But, though I still liked it a great deal, the second "half" of the film never captivated me in the same way. Fortunately, part of Kubrick's brilliance is that his films age incredibly well—where my experience watching them is affected by my own age, my mood, and the sociopolitical climate of the time—so that I find myself picking up on things I didn't pay as much attention to on previous watches and appreciating he and his crew's craft even more on repeat viewings. There's a reason that he's my favorite director. 

Much like the two "halves" of the film, I think Kubrick "was trying to suggest something about the duality of man," as lead Matthew Modine's Private Joke opines when grilled as to why he sports a peace sign button on his jacket whilst also having the words "BORN TO KILL" scrawled on his helmet. Both sections of the film end in in haunting and harrowing deaths, each tragic and the result of toxic masculinity, jingoism, and forced actions, based on survival in extreme situations. 

The topic and futility of war will probably never cease to be equally appalling and fascinating, as I'm not sure humankind as a whole will ever be able to reconcile its greed, its hunger for power, and its destructive nature. Full Metal Jacket is one of many war films set during the Vietnam War, but as with Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) (my review here), it stands as a singular, peerless achievement.

You can find my Stanley Kubrick Feature Films Ranked list here.