Full Metal Jacket

             The self proclaimed greatest war movie of all time is a very hard and interesting look. Matthew Modine plays Joker and follows him through Boot camp on Paris Island, where he is trained by the ruthless and crazy drill seargent. He is also put in charge of his unit because of his guts and attitude, but that puts him in charge of training the overweight simpleton Leonard Lawrence. Soon he has screwed up so much that the sergeant begins punishing the rest of the squad, and they all begin to hate him.

            Soon the Psychological strain becomes too much for Leonard and he snaps, eventually after graduation he kills the sergeant and himself, and Joker is the only witness for the double shooting. That’s the first half of the movie. The second half follows Joker as a Stars & Stripes reporter, taking turns in the field and in the office. He meets an old friend and sticks with their platoon, soon they are stranded out in the field without their squad leader and a Sniper pins them down.

            The concluding battle is one of excellence and really captures the whole fashion of the modern war. The entire time they are in Vietnam, the audience is bombarded by a series of amazing characters and circumstances. The very ideas in this movie were revolutionary to the war movie and all the sides of the war are really captured.

            This movie is a 2 and a must-see, and the whole thins is just so well done. Another Kubrick masterpiece, this movie is hard to swallow. TO this day, the Vietnam war is one of the most elusively confusing time periods, and this movie is helpful to understand.