Review “”

“Full Metal Jacket” is a 1987 movie about the . It follows Marines, especially future military reporter Joker, from their training in Parris Island to their jobs on the battlefield in Vietnam during the Tet holiday. Yet, there is no big personal story around one person, the Marines seem to just stay Marines. It is based on novel “The Short-Timers” by Gustav Hasford, who was a correspondent in Vietnam and supposedly wrote the book on his experiences. “Full Metal Jacket” differs from other war movies about Vietnam as it shows things that are not usually in movies like these, but at the same time, ignores some of the overdramatized things - this all creates the message that the Vietnam War was different for everyone, this is true with all wars, I would say. They got correct the harshness of Marine training boot camp as it truly was not an easy experience. The way that reporting from Vietnam for “Stars and Stripes” was tightly controlled is also accurate to reality. As Lockhart said: "We run two basic stories here. Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants: winning of hearts and minds. OK? And combat action that results in a kill: winning the war." The action did move to Hue, which was a rough battlefield during the Vietnam War as about 40% of it was destroyed during 25 days of combat and about 116000 of its 140000 inhabitants were left homeless. These Hue scenes were actually filmed in London’s Docklands, which apparently were not looking too good around the mid-1980s. In the movie, we saw civilians in Hue being killed by Americans, while there the killing was done by communist Vietnam and its allies. Also, it is doubted that the sniper could have been as accurate as she was if she was using an AK-47, which is an automatic firearm. In conclusion, “Full Metal Jacket” was a war film with an entertaining twist that still showed the horrors of the time and it still had its historical accuracy, but that did not seem to be the main point.

Read reviews : 1) http://mason.gmu.edu/~zphipps/fmjpaper.html Mason.gmu.edu , “Questioning Reality in ’s Full Metal Jackcet” , by Zane Phipps 2) https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jun/24/full-metal-jacket-stanley-kubrick The Guardian, “Full Metal Jacket : history unzipped” , by Alex von Tunzelmann, published on June 24, 2010 3) https://warmoviebuff.blogspot.com/2013/06/16-full-metal-jacket.html Blogger, The War Movie Buff , “Full Metal Jacket” , published on June 4, 2013