Full Metal Jacket – like Melancholia and Boogie Nights – is a film of two distinct halves. The famous first, anchored by a blistering performance from R. Lee Ermey, takes place exclusively in the training camps for Vietnam. The group are given nicknames and seem optimistic about their upcoming campaign in the south of the country. This all comes to an abrupt end with the suicide of Private Pyle, a dead-eyed Vincent D’Onofrio who’s had too much before he’s even reached the battlefield.

While mentally exhausting, this first half has countless moments of black comedy — a Kubrick signature, like his stare which also features. There are songs like “Ho Chi Minh is a bitch”, and the troops heckling the drill sergeant, but the half that follows is almost unrecognisable from the first.

There’s a complete absence of glamour. Many have argued that there are few truly anti-war films. I think this is one, on a list including Berger’s ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ and Cimino’s ‘The Deer Hunter’. Why is this such a short list? Because there are no heroes. The penultimate scene features the platoon debating whether or not to leave a dying Vietnamese girl “to the rats,” a choice they ultimately oppose. After all, this is Mother Green and her killing machine at work; young men given the resources and guidance to kill at will. Do they always? No, but these moments are rare.

Their youth is perhaps the most prominent theme of the picture. From boot camp to the credits there are endless examples of locker room talk – insulting one another, making dark jokes, and coming out with lines that would go punished in almost any other context, except they have bigger things to worry about. Youth is synonymous with inexperience, and you could also argue this as the leading motif throughout. The final third features a film crew and photographers, but these are no journalists. They come across as student filmmakers. The soldiers are talking heads, but even on TV, their naivety shines through. “I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.”

As the credits roll, you can’t help but wonder what awaits. There’re direct allusions to thousand-yard stares and shellshock, but these are mentioned light-heartedly. Or, maybe they do know. As Matthew Modine’s Joker says: “I’m in a world of shit, yes, but I’m alive.”

Luke Pease

29.04.25