Rating: 
Summary: 45 Minutes of Nuclear Dynamite!!
Review: Stanley Kubrick has always had a fascination of the military (i.e., Dr. Strangelove, Paths of Glory). And in this movie he shows us what life is like in the US Marine Corps Boot Camp. Real life drill instructor turned actor, R. Lee Ermey gives a tour de force performance and turns the first 45 minutes of this movie into a Nuclear Hurricane!! Once the movie leaves boot camp, I felt it loses steam. But the direction of Kubrick is enough to leave you focused. Well Recommended!!
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant: One of the Best War Films Ever Made
Review: Stanley Kubrick had an uncompromising talent in telling stories. Full Metal Jacket, a harrowing study of the dehumanization of Vietnam, is no exception.The film is divided into three sections. The first section is all about Basic Training and the importance of a Drill Sergeant (Lee Ermey). It is here where you first meet the central character of the story: Private Joker (Matthew Modine). However, this section of the film is dominated by the presence of Leonard Lawrence a.k.a. Private Pyle (brilliantly played by Vincent D'Onofrio). He is nothing short of an idiot and he is the central subject of the Drill Sergeant's rage. After a while, he begins to go mad, which leads to the first section's unforgettable finale. The second part of the film basically deals with what Vietnam looked like in the midst of war. Joker is now a reporter for Stars and Stripes and he has been enlisted to cover the war along with the Lusthog squad, lead by his good friend from training, Private Cowboy (Arliss Howard). We are also introduced to the bloodthirsty Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin), Joker's "rival". The third part of the film is when Joker's world begins to fall apart when the platoon is attacked by a mysterious sniper. With the exception of Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket is the most disturbing war film ever made, mixed with the horrors of war but also the beauty of it. Unlike most war films today, despite a few graphic scenes, the violence is sparing and only used when absolutely necessary. Kubrick directs the film as if it's a God's eye view of combat, which adds more pain and sorrow to the characters. But even if you don't like Kubrick, the film is worth it alone for Mr. D'Onofrio's blistering portrayal of Pvt. Pyle. From the shaving of the heads montage at the beginning to the second you hear The Rolling Stones' melancholy opus Paint It Black at the ending credits, you know that this film is nothing short of extraordinary.
Rating:
Summary: Widescreen?? Are you crazy??
Review: To the reviewers who blast this DVD for being a 'Full-screen' version take note. Mr. Kubrick (as all filmmakers do) shot with a 4:3 aspect ratio on film and had no intention to crop the film for theatrical presentation. As with all his films, if you are seeing it in widescreen, you are seeing only 2/3rds of what Mr. Kubrick intended, which was, the full exposed frame of film.
Rating:
Summary: Landmark film, lousy DVD
Review: I would expect more from the official "Stanley Kubrick Collection" but since he's one of the most overated directors of all time I really shouldn't be disappointed. No widescreen...shame shame. I suppose I should be grateful for the 5.1 audio, which is quite good actually, but have to deduct more points for NO extras whatsoever. Well, unless you call a trailer an extra then there is "one" extra. BTW, there is [are] claims Kubrick "shot" this film in 4:3. [They] must have been from the same planet Stanley was from cause the theatrical release was in 1:85. DUH!
Rating: 
Summary: The Badtimers
Review: Compare Stanley Kubrick's early masterpiece "Paths of Glory" with the turgid and vacant "Full Metal Jacket" and you have a pretty clear picture of the magnitude of the director's decline after "2001." Apart from some of the worst acting he ever directed, the film is rife with the neurotic obsessions that overcame Kubrick in middle age. He would not, for instance, cross so much a body of water as the English Channel to film at more convenient locations in Spain, but instead inflated his budget by having his idea of Vietnam built on English stages. In the end he was so discouraged by the final product he didn't make another film for 12 years. Anybody wanting a clear idea of what the Vietnam War was all about is going to have to look elsewhere; and if you want to see why Kubrick was once thought to be the best American director of his generation, check any of his films from 1968 backward.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Movie; Not Sure What To Think Of The DVD ...
Review: I think many critics were too harsh on Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam movie, and still remember it as "must see" viewing when a high school student. Lee Ermy's drill instructor made our most sadistic phys ed teachers seem like Mr Rogers, and I will never forget the line from the Colonel that "Inside every Gook, there's an American trying to get out. We have to hold on to our senses until this "Peace Craze" passes over." Brilliant stuff and a Must Have for anyones war collection. But I agree with the critics who say that the film is disjointed, composed of set pieces, and really looses a lot of steam after Gomer Pyle and Lee Ermy are written out of the story. Their final confrontation is powerful material for the ages to be sure, but I would have been interested in seeing this tubby misfit turned killer set loose on the VC. But even "Charlie" doesn't seem to have much to do with the combat footage, which could have been set in any war. I also am not convinced that they are in Southeast Asia even with the palm trees Kubrick had planted to decorate his sets. The soldiers look too comfortable with their layers of clothing on, don't seem exhausted or scared enough, and it actually looks cold during the final shootout scenes. To a certain extent, I have always felt that Kubrick had sort of shot himself in the foot with various aspects of the movie, including the locations but most importantly by how uninteresting the narrative is once Joker gets in-country. There are some nice jabs at US military thinking and propaganda, but it's more like an echo of the preposterous situations from Dr Strangelove than any real new commentary from Kubrick. The American war in Vietnam was insane, barbaric, corrupt and cost lots of people their lives on both sides. Well, so what? What insight would Kubrick like us to take away from his movie, other than the fact that Joker is glad to be alive as the film ends? I'm glad to be alive every day ... you don't have to send me to war to figure that out. Yet I do appreciate the movie for what it offers -- Adam Baldwin's Animal Mother is hilarious and scary at the same time, the scene in the helicopter with the nutzo door gunner bragging about 52 confirmed dead water buffallo is so over the top it is perfect, and one really does get the impression that anyone who has survived sustained combat emerges a changed person, no matter how rational they were beforehand. My real puzzlement, though, comes from the "Stanley Kubrick Collection" DVD of the film, which he himself authorized to be presented in a full-screen format. The reason behind his decision is understandable, since the majority of home viewers seem to prefer the pan and scan full screen TV image, but I feel kind of cheated, and wish I had read more about just what I would be getting before shelling out the cash for it. I'm sure the trailers and other bonuses on the disc will delight "cultist" fans of the film, but frankly I wish I had saved myself ten bucks and just gotten a VHS tape. There is a special quality to watching a DVD film presented in widescreen format that I have never gotten from a VHS and kind of insist that any film I opt to invest in for DVD use be presented in a "letterboxed" format so I can see the movie in a form closest to what the director had intended. So since it was Kubrick's own decision to chop and reformat the image, one has to kind of live with it I guess. Then again nobody ever said that great artists don't sometimes make bad decisions on how to present their work. Kubrick seems to have shot himself in his foot twice, and the result is a puzzled, disatisfied viewer who feels like someone decided I wasn't smart enough to understand what a widescreen presentation was. I'd give the movie four stars out of five, but that chopped screen image just [unprintable] me off.
Rating:
Summary: The Jungian thing...
Review: Stanley Kubrick has been quoted as saying that with Full Metal Jacket, he wanted to make a war film, as opposed to an ANTI-war film. Condemning war is easily. It's a moral no-brainer. Trying to understand its nature is something far more challenging. As a result, Full Metal Jacket does something far more subtle and difficult than simply tell us that War is Hell (although it does that, too). To understand what and how, one must consider the film's structure: Full Metal Jacket is split brutally into two parts, the first of which follows our hero, Private Joker (Matthew Modine) through basic training at Parris Island. A tubby, slow-witted misfit named Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio in an effective performance) is pushed too hard by the sadistic drill instructor Hartmann (R. Lee Ermey), and ends up killing both Hartman and himself in the Grand Guignol blackout sketch that ends part one. It is at this point that many people have trouble with Full Metal Jacket, as the second half jumps to Viet Nam with no warning. Although Joker and another character named Cowboy (Arliss Howard) carry over from the first part of the film, they never so much as talk about Parris Island or the murder-suicide that marked their training there. It is as though that event happened in another universe, or at least a different movie. The key to this apparent gaffe in story cohesion is contained in a scene where Joker is confronted by a Major over having "Born to Kill" scrawled on his helmet at the same time he wears a peace symbol on his flak jacket. "I was trying to say something about the duality of man," he says, "...the Jungian thing, SIR!" Duality of man; duality of film. There are (in the film's developing thesis) two possible motivations for killing people and breaking things - compassion (to defend freedom and turn back despotism; our OFFICIAL purpose in Viet Nam), and annihilation (the perverse joy of revenge, of domination; of blood-soaked victory). Which motivation is more "moral"? Which leads to the "high-ground"? Doesn't annihilation always entail moral decay? And doesn't compassion always lead, ultimately, to peace, rather than violence? Through Joker's journey, from killer-in-training to killer-in-fact, we get a disturbing answer that, by its very simplicity, defies the kind of dumbed-down platitudes most war films (even really good ones like Kubrick's own Paths of Glory) try to feed us. The end finds Joker facing a wounded, disarmed sniper who has killed several of his fellow soldiers, as well as his best friend. In a typically Kubrickian reversal, the sadistic thing would be to "...leave her to the mother-lovin' rats..." (in other words, leave her in PEACE), rather than finish her off, which seems the more humane choice (through a paradoxical act of VIOLENCE). The sniper, a teenaged girl, even begs Joker to shoot her. It seems a simple, humanitarian act when he finally pulls the trigger, but in a long, ambiguous close-up on his face, we see the same demon lurking in Joker's eyes that haunted Lawrence back in Parris Island, just before he killed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, then himself. The connection is clear; even the same music cue (by Kubrick's daughter Vivian, under the pseudonym of "Abigail Mead") can be heard on the sound track. By setting up a situation where both possible choices (to kill or not to kill) seem at once sadistic and kind, virtuous and evil, we are forced to see the situation on a more abstract level - where words fail, but a horrible insight reveals itself. The nature of war, it seems to suggest, is the nature of mankind - and vice-versa. Kubrick's production values are first-rate. The DVD looks and sounds quite good, given the source material (Kubrick's muted palette is deliberate; his original sound mix was a fairly compressed monaural track). One particular use of a Steadicam with a slightly longer-than-ideal lens is inspired, giving us a view shaky enough to seem "real" but smooth enough to be fluid. In the Kubrick canon, Full Metal Jacket is a hotly debated film. Whether you love it or hate it, just remember: it's a Jungian thing.
Rating:
Summary: Way better than Platoon
Review: If your a Kubrick fan you already know that he made the best movies. Every one of his movies are among the best of their specific genre. Full Metal Jacket is no exception. The great Vietnam movie is always said to be Platoon. It won the Oscar, and it is a good movie. But, Full Metal Jacket blows it away. Completely. It's a more believeable movie for one. Second, much like another great war movie, All Quiet on the Western Front, it takes us on a journey with these young solders. We see them as kids, and then as full-fledged killers. The story arch is quite incredible. And it doesn't have some dumb Hollywood ending like Platoon had. The horrors of Vietnam are fully realized, and it didn't take a 1000 special effects to do it. Solid acting, and a great script was all it took. Oliver Stone, give your Oscar to Kubrick, he outdid you bigtime.
Rating:
Summary: Best Movie Portrayal of Marine Corps Boot Camp
Review: This movie came the closest of all movies to the experience I had in Marine Corps Bootcamp. Their Senior Drill Instructor was much like my own. I had many of the same experiences as those in the movie: the drill instructors putting you to bed (every night), footlockers thrown all over the floor, blanket parties, recruits caught with contraban like Pvt. Pile's doughnut. My own experience seemed more intense maybe because the total focus of the movie was only on their senior drill instructor and nothing on the other 2, and having 3 months of bootcamp vs. their 2.
All scenes were believable - I think drill instructors have to memorize all the same sayings in drill instructor training. The only part I found unreal is the end of this section of the movie. I believe his D.I to be a combat vet with all his ribbons. Pile would have been on his face and off to Leavenworth before he knew it.
The movie is broken in half (2 movies in one). The second half is the continuing story in Vietnam. The mood of the second half of the film is as bizarre as the first half. Not a family movie.
Rating:
Summary: D'Onofrio in the beginning...???After the First Turn On
Review: Everyone knows about this one...and Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio) is the best of the first part...but you gotta watch the whole movie,because it's ALL good...to Mickey Mouse...The only reason I gave only 4 stars...is I wish Vinny would have been in the whole thing!!
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