REVIEW: Full Metal Jacket -- I freakin' love this movie.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- this is the sort of movie you're supposed to watch in eighth grade and then fall madly in love with it. And yeah, yeah, if I had been enough of a cinephile to have seen it the first time when I was fourteen, then I probably would have watched it about forty subsequent times that year.

But I didn't. I'm lame, and only just watched the film for the first time recently, but I freakin' love Full Metal Jacket. I know, I know, it's Kubrick, it's so cliché to praise his work, but Full Metal Jacket is part self-reflexive Vietnam flick, part chillingly stark military-school fare, and 100% kick-ass. There's a reason why it's in the IMDb top 250.



Sure the "duality" of this film does not "gel" completely. There's potential for a ten-page analytical essay on that issue. We go from bleak, suicide-inducing cruelty in suburban America, to the wisecracking adventures of some ragtag marines, shooting VCs and calling each other "turd." If you like jokes making fun of racists that are also, you know, kind of racist, then you'll like this. But that's what makes Full Metal Jacket so awesome -- it's a war film that makes fun of war films. And all kinds of war films -- the ones about hard life at boot camp, those covering tough times in combat, and a little bit, even, of those stories of that supposed veteran sagacity that comes with having experienced battle, through Joker's sporadic, retrospective voice-over. There's even a whole section devoted to camera crews interviewing soldiers and "shooting" some action. Full Metal Jacket is a war movie that is in no way trying to fool you into thinking it isn't one. And come on, guys... it's Kubrick, and it's from 1987. If you haven't seen it yet, then get your ass in gear, man.