Rating: 
Summary: Its worth five stars but not as good as Hambuger Hill
Review: This is the sec. best film about the Veitnam War. Hambuher Hill was better in that it was more realistic and how men surrive when put into adverse conditions. But this film also shows real basic tranning on paris island as it was in the sixties, alot of what happened in the film at boot camp did happen except the shooting incident. Some did have nervous breakdowns and droped out. But i felt that the combat scenes didn't do the movie justace they could have alaborated and show how their tranning helped or failed them. But great movie and is up their and better than private ryan.
Rating:
Summary: Harrowing and Disturbing
Review: Kubrick does a wonderful job by reaching into exactly how the armed forces operate and ripping it's proverbial skeleton out to expose the true horrors that exist in war. The method to turn human man into a killer, to strip away all humanity that he has is clearly outlined in this film, and exposes war for what it is.War is not a glorious, fun, great, and honorable thing. It dehumanizes and strips emotions from a man, to keep him killing the enemy until they are all dead or until he is killed himself. Joker, in this movie, is a peace loving man...He narrarates the first half of the movie, which is Marine training. As disquieting as this segment is, I've found it to be truthful, too. While talking to someone about it, they commented on how when they had been at marine bootcamp, that it was exactly the way it is protrayed in Full Metal Jacket. Unforgiving. While on deployment in 'nam, Joker, along with the rest of his troop (he is a journalist for the marines, if my memory serves correctly) and is sent with another stationed troop to "see what war is really like." He wears a pin that has a peace sign, and then on his helmet is written "Born To Kill." The ending of the movie is, (I must agree with other reviewers) a disturbing end...Joker is moved to kill someone, something he has literally vowed not to do, as his anti-war mentality is slowly ground down and after months of the drumming into his mind that he must kill the enemy, he believes it. Full Metal Jacket defines what a war movie should be, and not a glorified, candied and fakely thrown together plot as many others are. It is honest and brutal.
Rating:
Summary: A realistic view of the Marine Corps
Review: The first half of the movie is based on Marine Corps recruit training on Parris Island. Lee Ermey (a real Marine) gives a brutal, yet truthful, look into how the Marines are trained. The brutality and viciousness of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman is fabulous. Sgt Hartman is without a doubt the most unforgettable character in any movie. Many won't take to this film because of its brutality. Those that take to the film will want to watch it over and over again.
Rating: 
Summary: creepy Gomer
Review: Man, I really felt bad for 'Gomer' in the training part of this movie. I knew he was gonna lose it sooner or later. The part where the fellow gets picked off in the decimated city, and his buds can't get to him cuz they don't know where the sniper is....pretty rough stuff. Also, the ending, when all the soldiers are marching through the burning town singing "The Mickey Mouse" theme song with M-16s in their hands, well, I guess that's what America is all about.
Rating:
Summary: Kubrick on Vietnam
Review: Was this "the best war movie ever made" as the dust jacket proclaims, or just a contrived bit of entertainment, seductive, but ultimately paper thin? Or maybe this was anti-war propaganda with chuckles from a bleeding heart liberal? Looking back and seeing it again some fifteen years later (and about fifteen other years after the fact) one can say, "no" and "no" and "something like that, thank you." The sheer waste and stupidity of war is gotten across, and Kubrick is to be thanked for that. Comparing Full Metal Jacket to some other war movies, say, the pretentious Saving Private Ryan (1998), we note that it may be the funniest war movie ever made. (But then one recalls Mister Roberts (1955).) Vietnam was a lovely war, as all wars are, kind of like America's loss of innocence. One would suppose [this had happened] long ago at Gettysburg or somewhere thereabouts, but we proved in Vietnam it wasn't so. We helped to pile them high at Ypres and Verdun, but that was a limited engagement, and we learned jack-zero. And in World War II we really had no choice. But in Vietnam JFK and LBJ thought with a little use of force we could stem the tide of a feared ideology, not yet knowing it would start to die of its own accord, and so we sent off a few of our youngest and brightest as a small price to pay. Well, maybe not our brightest, just our unluckiest or perhaps just those stupid enough to go ("hell no, we won't go!" said some) or poor enough to have no choice. Those who went were mostly "young and dumb and full of come." But, what the hey, wars are always a good way to kill off superfluous males. By the time we figured out we weren't getting any kind of bang for our buck, meaning we could pile them high at Da Nang or anywhere in the Mekong Delta and it wouldn't make a ... difference, it was too late. The body bags were coming home and some of the bro's of conscription age clearly didn't like the fit. They staged a protest or two, and amazingly enough a lot of people saw the wisdom of their position, and we were forced to declare a victory and pull out, this in the heyday of Tricky Dick. Kubrick recalls those balmy times with boot camp ditties and a whole lot of well expressed jar head jargon to which he adds some amusing audio selections, e.g., Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots were Made for Walking," "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones, and most appropriately in the classic Kubrick ironic style, the Mickey Mouse Club theme song, "Em-eye-cee, kay-ee-why, em-oh-you-ees-ee! Mickey Mouse! Mickey Mouse!" Kubrick got the story from the novel The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford, the title referring to those lucky soldiers with only a short time left before rotating back to "the land of the big P.X.'s," the luckiest of whom were "so short" they could "crawl under a rattlesnake's belly with a high hat on." ... By the way, comparing this to Barry Levinson's fine Good Morning Vietnam from the same year, it's interesting to note that two directors independently came up with practically the same treatment of our experience in Vietnam, albeit with a different emphasis. I think they got it right.
Rating:
Summary: 10 STARS
Review: THE MOST REALISTIC EXPERIENCE OF THE MILITARY..
Rating:
Summary: ENTERTAINING, dont get confused though
Review: this is a great move packed with lots of action, but dont get confused as its nothing but action. To many people use it as a reffrance to Vietnam. Come on, in the movie the guy is carrying a 50 caliber machine gun under his arm. Its very unrealistic but its a great fantasy and action. Definetly the beginning is the best part of the movie.
Rating:
Summary: A realistic, well directed film
Review: A good story about a group of men slowly being torn apart by the horrors of war. Opening with a mezmorizing scene at the Marine Corps training camp, and the gut-wrenching Drill Instructor which constantly beats the platoon into a pulp, is the most realistic training scence that I have ever viewed. This film should be viwed by anyone with a serious passion for war films and Nam history, NOT a family film.
Rating:
Summary: This is Two Films in One!
Review: Fade in:Welcome to the U.S. Marines. Fade out Fade in:Welcome to Vietnam Stanley Kubrick is my fave fimmaker of all time, and he has a style that is unlike any others. The reverse track, the heavy use(and expert use) of the steadicam, the slow pull backs and slow zoom ins are all Kubrick. One of the best scenes is when a squad of war correspondents are scene panning past a unit of Marines after an attack(with The Trashmen playing in the background), and each Marine gives his contribution to Sgt. Cowboy's "Start the cameras, this is Vietnam--The movie! ". Boot camp scenes are powerful and there is one scene that is priceless as the D.I. is lecturing to the young boots about 2 of the world's greatest sharpshooters Charles Whitman and Lee Harvey Oswald!As we are taken to Hue City during the '68 Tet Offensive, we get to see what happened to some of the recruits that made it out of boot camp(now of higher rank-Sgt.Joker,for ex.). Good Vietnam war flick that shows the young audiences that the war was not just fought out in the jungles, but in the cities as well.My only complaint(and it is a technical one) is when are they going to re-release this in DOLBY-SURROUND?
Rating:
Summary: The Real Vietnam
Review: Stanley Kubrick should be applauded for -- in what is perhaps the first instance of a Hollywood movie -- accurately portraying the American conscience in Vietnam. Forget the paper-thin morality and hidden propaganda of ``Platoon," and the chest-thumping testosterone of such laughingly bad portrayals as ``The Green Berets"; Mr. Kubrick shows us the real Vietnam: from the dehumanization of boot camp to the sporadic deaths of comrades in battle. Essentially, this is two films in one. The first half dealing with new recruits adjusting to military life; the second with actual combat. Many will tell you the latter doesn't live up to the former, do not believe them. Mr. Kubrick delivers an incredibly accurate depiction of Vietnam warfare. Unfortunately, I had to take a star off this otherwise perfect movie because the DVD transfer is quite bad.
| 
