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Full Metal Jacket

Full Metal Jacket

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Excellent movie - poorly crafted DVD
Review: This movie is excellent. I don't think I need to expand upon the numerous reviews which state this very same thing. I do, however, want to point out that I was sorely disappointed to see the movie only released as standard (1.33) format and not widescreen. As extras go, this DVD falls short here too. For a "Collector's Edition" I expect to see more depth behind the movie. I know Kubrick is dead but I'm sure there are numerous interviews with him, the author of "The Short Timers"(dead as well) and the auhor of the screenplay. More information about why the movie was split the way it was. Why didn't it cut between incidents at boot camp and the war? So many questions are left unanswered by not including an interview into the making of the movie and the writing of the screenplay that I have to give this particular edition a thumbs down.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Limited Edition Collector's Set Features are a Lie!
Review: I held off buying the 'normal' edition of FMJ for the very reason that I wanted a widescreen version. The Amazon specifications for the Limited Edition clearly state:

"Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Box set"

After, pre-ordering, and waiting months and months, I finally received my Limited Edition yesterday. And guess what?

It's still NOT WIDESCREEN!

I'm highly disappointed that I was mislead on the feature set. If you want a widescreen version of FMJ, don't buy the Limited Edition, despite what the specifications say.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Not as Advertised!
Review: If you are looking for the widescreen format of this film,
this isn't it. Great movie but this print looks and sounds just like the first release of the film on DVD. Save your money.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: BEST WAR MOVIE OF ALL TIME
Review: I first saw Kubrick's work with A Clockwork Orange. Though I liked the book, I was less animate about the film. As a result, I was a little leery of his movies. I saw Oliver Stones' Platoon and was less than impressed. I had heard good things about Full Metal Jacket, so I thought I would see it, hoping it would exceed Platoon. It did. The first half of the film was chilling, and Private Pile's ordeal made me sick, especially during the brutal hazing scene. Though I usually am not so sensitive to violence in movies, Private Pile's last scene was one of the scariest and disturbing I've seen. The second half was excellent as well and, to my relief, less upseting than the first. It had some of the most gripping battle scenes imagineable. Overall, the movie was truly great, with great acting (something often lacking in movies), great cinematography, and a great plot.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: fair . . . and definately not Kubrick's best
Review: "Full Metal Jacket" . . . it was good, but where did Stanley Kubrick mess up on this number?
i am a HUGE Stanley Kubrick fan, and i own many of his films, but not this one. i rented it, and was suprised to say that i was not what i expected. it's not a bad DVD, but it just wasn't good.
"Full Metal Jacket" is about a group of Marines in Vietnam. the first half consists of their brutal basic training, under the iron fist of the merciless Sgt. Hartman, brilliantly portrayed by Lee Ermey.
the second half takes place in good ole 'Nam, where our friends are battling an unseen enemy. i loved the first half, but the 'Nam part was poorly-made and rather bland. if you want the greatest war film, check out "Platoon".
if you want to see a good movie, check out "Full Metal Jacket". it's not good, but worth seeing. the action scenes are horribly photographed, and the screenplay of banal and dark. better luck next time, Stanley

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Newley Remastered!
Review: The Trnasfer is of a very High Quality, The only artifacting problems are with the shiny bullet chains and tha's a minor one at that :)

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Essential Buy for Any War Film Enthusiast
Review: I read the main reviewer's assesment of this film, and I couldn't
disagree more. This film was not difficult to follow, it had an
excellent cast, highly quotable, and very entertaining. I particularly enjoyed the beginning where it starts off in
basic training with a classic portrayal of a drill sergeant,
as he berates his newly initiated soldiers. It's a very realistic
look at basic training, then it moves into more actual Vietnam
campaigns. Let me say that I'm not a huge Kubrick fan, and I
do agree that some of his films are way, way out there, and
very boring. This one was one of the few that was not. Matthew
Modine is excellent, as well as an overweight Vincent D'nofrio,
of 'The Cell' fame. The Drill Sergeant was brilliant and I
apologize, but his name escapes me. This film is a must buy for
any Vietnam film enthusiast!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Kubrick is a GOD!!!
Review: Full Metal Jacket is the best war movie ever. Full Metal Jacket shows us how army can destroy people's minds. It starts in a military base where men are trained to become marines for the Viet-Nam war. One man, who is a bit fat, is hated by the colonel, who beats him and who discovers a donut in his box. He makes the others hate the guy and one night, the others (including Joker, his friend)beat him up. He is sad and then decides to get better in the marine training...and it works, but he then kills the colonel and himself...Then they go to the war and many things happen...this is a psychological film, more human than The Thin Red Line, and more dramatic than Saving Private Ryan. The actors were excellent too, but it seemed like the film was incomplete. Kubrick is the master, a god!!! See this film at all costs!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Review: Stanley Kubrick's (full metal jacket) is based from Gustav Hasford's gory & obscure novel (short-timers). A two part film,the first dealing with a marine bootcamp,and the second centering on Vietnam during the 1968 Tet Offensive. Bleak,Ironic,and perversely funny. This film offers little hope & even less humanity. The first part, is the most riveting pieces of film I've ever seen. You tend to feel numb as it fades into the second half. Making the viewer feeling a bit let down. I'ts not as strong as the first, it's a bit detached and unstructured. But I think that was the intent. The film shows a surreal view of combat. The film's climax is both suspenseful and very haunting. The last image of the marines walking through a burned out city is both bizzare and unforgettable. Superb direction,cinematography,acting, and great sound, ( the sounds of distant explosions & gunfire) are just one example. The music is both conventional and eerie. This is Stanley Kubrick's best film.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Tough, disciplined, hard-thinking cinema.
Review: 'Full Metal Jacket' is far and away the greatest of all Vietnam films, the only one free from cant, humbug, melodrama, hysteria, mythologising or racist self-pity. Kubrick's film is more clear-eyed than those of Coppola, Cimino, Stone et al because he is under no delusion about America - he doesn't see Vietnam as some Fall from a mythic Eden, but a logical consequence of the American way. Because Kubrick's film isn't a narrative of inevitable defeat, but the moulding of the perfect American man, one whose duality (ambiguity, humanity) is ruthlessly expunged. Joker may say he feels glad to be alive, but the enduring image, a somnambulistic army of black figures marching in a dark, burning, never-ending landscape, is one of Hell, not the ersatz inferno of your average Vietnam movie, but the banal hell of Reagan's America, joylessly, unstoppably globalising. This is a Vietnam America won.

A lot of people, even so-called Kubrick fans, don't like 'Jacket'. This is because Kubrick resolutely refuses to give his audience a get-out clause, sugar to sweeten the pill, some manly sentiment or lachrymose hysteria. There is no critical distance, no attempt to suggest there is a better possibility, no appeal to our better instincts.

One might argue that there is a kind of relief in laughter, that Nietzschean guffaw against the void. Laughter is human, to share it is to be connected with other people. But if you look at the way Kubrick sets up the comedy in 'Jacket' (and this is one of the funniest movies ever made), you will find there is little real relief. As in all his films, Kubrick uses the identificatory techniques of conventional cinema (point-of-view shots, etc.) to make us identify not with the 'good' guys, the victims, the cannon fodder, the cynics who see through the war, but the fascists in authority.

The funniest comic set-pieces involve the ritual humiiation of Private Pyle - if we laugh, we join in his humiliation, siding with the values of murderous authority; if we don't (and it's almost impossible not to), we are left helplessly numb. 'Jacket' is a very numbing film, brilliantly replicating the brutalisation of feeling systematically undertaken by the military system (and beyond).


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