by Warner Home Video
| Average Rating: |
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| Sales Rank: | 6294 (lower is better) |
| Price as of: | 10/10/2008 2:15:14 PM MDT |
| Price Used: | $1.00 |
| Shipping: | Free Shipping on most orders over $25* |
| Availability: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| Release Date: | 2001-06-12 |
| Label: | Warner Home Video |
| UPC: | 085392115426 |
| Binding: | DVD |
| Published By: | Warner Home Video |
| ASIN: | B00005ATQF |
| Category: | DVD |
Actors and Actresses
Editorial Reviews and Product Descriptions
Description
The story of an 18-year-old marine recruit named Private Joker - from his carnage-and-machismo boot camp to his climactic involvement in the heavy fighting in Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive.
Amazon.com essential video
Stanley Kubrick's 1987, penultimate film seemed to a lot of people to be contrived and out of touch with the '80s vogue for such intensely realistic portrayals of the Vietnam War as Platoon and The Deer Hunter. Certainly, Kubrick gave audiences plenty of reason to wonder why he made the film at all: essentially a two-part drama that begins on a Parris Island boot camp for rookie Marines and abruptly switches to Vietnam (actually shot on sound stages and locations near London), Full Metal Jacket comes across as a series of self-contained chapters in a story whose logical and thematic development is oblique at best. Then again, much the same was said about Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a masterwork both enthralled with and satiric about the future's role in the unfinished business of human evolution. In a way, Full Metal Jacket is the wholly grim counterpart of 2001. While the latter is a truly 1960s film, both wide-eyed and wary, about the intertwining of progress and isolation (ending in our redemption, finally, by death), Full Metal Jacket is a cynical, Reagan-era view of the 1960s' hunger for experience and consciousness that fulfilled itself in violence. Lee Ermey made film history as the Marine drill instructor whose ritualized debasement of men in the name of tribal uniformity creates its darkest angel in a murderous half-wit (Vincent D'Onofrio). Matthew Modine gives a smart and savvy performance as Private Joker, the clowning, military journalist who yearns to get away from the propaganda machine and know firsthand the horrific revelation of the front line. In Full Metal Jacket, depravity and fulfillment go hand in hand, and it's no wonder Kubrick kept his steely distance from the material to make the point. --Tom Keogh
Amazon.com
Stanley Kubrick's 1987, penultimate film seemed to a lot of people to be contrived and out of touch with the '80s vogue for such intensely realistic portrayals of the Vietnam War as Platoon and The Deer Hunter. Certainly, Kubrick gave audiences plenty of reason to wonder why he made the film at all: essentially a two-part drama that begins on a Parris Island boot camp for rookie Marines and abruptly switches to Vietnam (actually shot on sound stages and locations near London), Full Metal Jacket comes across as a series of self-contained chapters in a story whose logical and thematic development is oblique at best. Then again, much the same was said about Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a masterwork both enthralled with and satiric about the future's role in the unfinished business of human evolution. In a way, Full Metal Jacket is the wholly grim counterpart of 2001. While the latter is a truly 1960s film, both wide-eyed and wary, about the intertwining of progress and isolation (ending in our redemption, finally, by death), Full Metal Jacket is a cynical, Reagan-era view of the 1960s' hunger for experience and consciousness that fulfilled itself in violence. Lee Ermey made film history as the Marine drill instructor whose ritualized debasement of men in the name of tribal uniformity creates its darkest angel in a murderous half-wit (Vincent D'Onofrio). Matthew Modine gives a smart and savvy performance as Private Joker, the clowning, military journalist who yearns to get away from the propaganda machine and know firsthand the horrific revelation of the front line. In Full Metal Jacket, depravity and fulfillment go hand in hand, and it's no wonder Kubrick kept his steely distance from the material to make the point. --Tom Keogh
Customer Reviews
half good, half bad - Reviewed on 2008-10-06
Full metal Jacket is really two movies in one. The first movie is a very realistic journey through the boot camp process for the marines. The reason why its so realistic is that Kubrick found a DI who could act and let the process run as if it were real. The only flaw in it is the murder-suicide at the end. Its just not realistic. It would have been more belevable as an ordinary suicide. The other thing that didn't quite catch is that DIs and the process don't just punish the weak. They go after the strong ones too.
The second half of the movie is worthless. The main character is suddenly made a journalist in Vietnam for a handful of pointless scences hanging around base and then just as suddenly is pushed into fighting in an infantry squad in Hue. All the realism of the early part of the film is lost. Suddenly we have Rambo running around with the big gun that never needs ammunition. We have marines advancing into a city of Hue that looks like Stalingrad. While Hue might have looked like this after the marines cleared the city, its kind of a major mistake to make it look like this BEFORE they cleared it. Everything about the "combat" scenes is wrong.
And what does everything build to. Pity for a female Vietnamese sniper. The leads spend more time whining, crying and acting like idiots over the sniper than they did over their own dead.
The only positive thing I can say about the second half the film is that its missing all the unrealistic "soldiers talk about the war" scenes that fill most every other movie about vietnam.
Watch the film for the first half and shut it off when they get to Vietnam.
As far as blu-ray goes, this film doesn't deserve it and doesn't benefit from it. It might as well have been on DVD.
Every scene is another example of how Hollywood seems content to distort reality in order to sell some hollow, moronic wreck that will be a big hit with the Kubrick cult, as well as all those theory laden ''post-modernists'' who think because they read Nietzsche they are an expert on everything including the combat tactics, protocall, and capabilities of the US Marines in 1968. What a pompous, ridiculous, insulting, and vulgar film for anyone who values accuracy, and objectivity (DID I MENTION ACCURACY?) when being shown a representation of history. For all the people who served, i am truly sorry this is what many people beleive to be your experience and what you fought for. If you want a -better- (but still a movie) glimpse of squad level combat watch Saving Private Ryan. All this film accomplishes is creating frustration, and sadness for those who wish to see the complexities of war approached with dignity and true insight. Skip this misleading waste of time...
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Book Subjects
- Action
- Action / Adventure
- Action/Adventure
- Adult Situations
- Adventure
- Angry
- Anti-War Film
- Biting
- Color
- Combat Films
- Confrontational
- Drama
- English
- Feature
- Feature Film-action/Adventure
- Forceful
- Graphic Violence
- Gritty
- High Production Values
- Innocence Lost
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