Full Metal Jacket

Full Metal Jacket was released in 1987. Stanley Kubrick has produced, directed and co-written it. Full Metal Jacket is a war film which tells about a platoon of U.S. Marines in the Vietnam War.

The plot is divided into two parts. First part shows how the platoon trains for Vietnam War. In the main role of first part are soldiers Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence (Vincent D’Onofrio) and “Joker” (Matthew Modine) and their Drill Instructor Hartman (R. Lee Ermey). Gomer Pyle is overweight and a little bit stupid. Joker helps him at training camp as much as he can. Hartman punishes other platoon for Gomer Pyle’s mistakes and other soldier starts to hate Gomer Pyle. Pyle gets mental problems and one night he shoots first Hartman and then himself.

In the second part of film Joker become a compact reporter and photographer. He interviews other soldiers about their opinions and experiences. His squad gets ambushed by sniper and few of his friends dies. When they finally found the sniper they notice that the shooter was a little girl. Joker tries to shoot her but his rifle gets stuck, but Jokers squad leader comes rescue him and shoot the girl.

Full Metal Jacket is not a war film which has only massive special effects and lots of shooting. But war scenes was still done great and shooting looked realistic.

Film director Stanley Kubrick made only 16 movies in his career, but some of them are truly masterpieces. His best known movies are: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket. He have also won Oscar-award and have been nominated many times.

One special note about the cast is that the actor of Gomer Pyle was required to gain weight for the role and added 32 kilograms to his body before the movie filming. It took 9 months and it is the record for the largest weight gained for a role.

I liked about the movie a lot. Others are liked it also as we can see on IMDb’s rating 8,4/10 which is very good. Full Metal Jacket is truly one of the most legendries war films.