Full Metal Jacket (War Movie)

For this week’s movie, the war movie, I watched Full Metal Jacket. Overall, I liked the film. It does a lot different than other war movies in that it’s humorous at the beginning during the Marine Corps training and then is suddenly really deadpan and straightforward. There is nothing glorified in the actual war segment except for how much war sucks and even that isn’t overly glorified. The tone of the whole movie can be summarized well by the part where the soldiers are being interviewed. Each soldier has a different persona about him, just like each part of the movie has a different personality. The movie is definitely worth watching at least for the iconic beginning, which spawned a plethora of quotes and catch phrases. I do have a few gripes with the movie, however. The murder-suicide at the end of the training doesn’t really do anything for the movie other than close out Pyle’s character, which was the butt of the jokes on the island. Also, there’s no rhyme and reason to the people that die from gunshot wounds. 8 ball gets shot 4 times before he dies, every time in the legs, Doc gets shot 3 times in the arms, then mowed up his chest and dies, Cowboy gets shot once in the torso and dies, and keep in mind all of these guys are marines wearing body armor, but then the sniper at the end, who turns out to be a young girl, gets absolutely melted by the new guy and doesn’t die until Joker caps her in the head. You can even see blood indicating bullet wounds on her neck but she doesn’t die until Joker kills her. All gripes aside, the movie is pretty good. I’d give it an 8/10