| Full Metal Jacket | |
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Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Produced by | Stanley Kubrick Jan Harlan |
| Screenplay by | Stanley Kubrick Michael Herr Gustav Hasford |
| Based on | The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford |
| Starring | Matthew Modine Adam Baldwin Vincent D'Onofrio Lee Ermey |
| Music by | Abigail Mead |
| Cinematography | Douglas Milsome |
| Editing by | Martin Hunter |
| Studio | Harrier Films Natant |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | June 26, 1987 |
| Running time | 116 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $30 million |
| Box office | $46.3 million[1] |
Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It is an adaptation of the 1979 novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford and stars Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, R. Lee Ermey, Arliss Howard and Adam Baldwin. The film follows a platoon of U.S. Marines through their training and depicts some experiences of two of them in the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. The film title refers to the full metal jacket bullet used by infantry riflemen.
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In 1967, during the Vietnam War, a group of new United States Marine Corps recruits arrives at Parris Island for training. After having their heads shaved, they meet their senior drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey). Hartman employs draconian tactics to turn the recruits into hardened marines prepared for combat. Among the recruits are Privates "Joker" (Matthew Modine), "Cowboy" (Arliss Howard), and the overweight, bumbling Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio), who earns the nickname "Gomer Pyle" after attracting Hartman's wrath.
Unresponsive to Hartman's discipline, Pyle is eventually paired with Joker. Pyle begins to improve with Joker's help, but regresses when Hartman discovers a contraband jelly doughnut in Pyle's foot locker. Believing that the recruits have failed to improve Pyle, Hartman adopts a collective punishment policy: Every mistake made by Pyle will reward Pyle and earn the rest of the platoon punishment. The platoon is forced to do pushups while Pyle is humiliatingly forced to eat the doughnut. In retaliation, at night the platoon (including a reluctant Joker) hazes Pyle with a blanket party, restraining him to his bunk, gagging him and beating him with bars of soap wrapped in towels. After this incident, Pyle undergoes a personality change, becoming a model marine. This impresses Hartman, but worries Joker, who recognizes signs of mental breakdown in Pyle, such as talking to his M14 rifle.
After graduation, each recruit receives an assignment to an occupational specialty, with most being sent to the infantry; Joker is assigned to Basic Military Journalism. On the platoon's last night on Parris Island, while Joker is on fire watch he discovers Pyle in the bathroom loading his M14 with live ammunition. Joker attempts to calm Pyle, who executes drill commands and recites the Rifleman's Creed. The noise awakens the entire platoon and Hartman, who confronts Pyle and orders him to surrender the rifle. Pyle fatally shoots Hartman, and then commits suicide in front of Joker.
In January 1968, Joker has become a corporal and a Marine War correspondent in Vietnam with Stars and Stripes, assigned to a public-affairs unit with Private First Class Rafterman (Kevyn Major Howard), a combat photographer. Rafterman wants to go into combat, as Joker claims he has done. One of Joker's colleagues mocks his inexperience, claiming he does not have the thousand-yard stare of a man who has seen war. Gunfire interrupts their argument: the North Vietnamese Army begins the Tet Offensive and attempts to overrun the base.
The journalism staff is briefed the next day about enemy attacks throughout South Vietnam. Lt. Lockhart sends Joker to Phu Bai. Rafterman accompanies him to see combat. There, they meet the Lusthog Squad, where Cowboy is now a Sergeant and second-in-command. Joker accompanies the squad during the Battle of Huế, where their commander Lt. Touchdown (Ed O'Ross) is killed by the enemy. After the area is declared secure by the Marines, a team of American news journalists and reporters enter Huế and interview various Marines about their experiences in Vietnam and their opinions about the war.
During patrol, Crazy Earl (Kieron Jecchinis), the team's new squad leader, is killed by a booby trap, leaving Cowboy in command. The squad becomes lost in the rubble and Cowboy orders Eightball (Dorian Harewood) to recon the area. A Vietcong sniper wounds Eightball and the squad medic Doc Jay (John Stafford) attempts to save him against orders, being shot and wounded himself. The sniper leaves the men wounded to draw out more of the squad. Cowboy learns that tank support is not available and orders the team to prepare for withdrawal. The squad's machine gunner, Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin), disobeys Cowboy and attempts to avenge his friends. He discovers there is only one sniper, but Doc Jay and Eightball are killed when Doc attempts to indicate the sniper's location. While maneuvering to locate the sniper, Cowboy is fatally shot and dies in Joker's arms.
Animal Mother assumes command of the squad. Under the cover of smoke grenades, the squad advances on the sniper's position. Joker discovers the sniper, an adolescent female, and attempts to shoot her, but his rifle jams and alerts her to his presence. As Joker is about to be killed, Rafterman shoots the sniper. As Animal Mother and the squad converge, the mortally wounded sniper repeatedly begs for death, prompting an argument about whether or not to kill her. Animal Mother decides to allow a mercy killing only if Joker performs it. After some hesitation, Joker shoots her with his sidearm. The Marines congratulate him on his kill as Joker stares into the distance, displaying the thousand-yard stare. The Marines march toward their camp, singing the Mickey Mouse March. Joker states that despite being "in a world of shit" that he is glad to be alive, and is unafraid.
Kubrick contacted Michael Herr, author of the Vietnam War memoir Dispatches, in the spring of 1980 to discuss working on a film about the Holocaust, but eventually discarded that in favor of a film about the Vietnam War.[5] They met in England and the director told him that he wanted to do a war film but he had yet to find a story to adapt.[6] Kubrick discovered Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers while reading the Virginia Kirkus Review[7] and Herr received it in bound galleys and thought that it was a masterpiece.[6] In 1982, Kubrick read the novel twice and afterwards thought that it "was a unique, absolutely wonderful book" and decided, along with Herr,[5] that it would be the basis for his next film.[7] According to the filmmaker, he was drawn to the book's dialogue that was "almost poetic in its carved-out, stark quality."[7] In 1983, he began researching for this film, watching past footage and documentaries, reading Vietnamese newspapers on microfilm from the Library of Congress, and studied hundreds of photographs from the era.[8] Initially, Herr was not interested in revisiting his Vietnam War experiences and Kubrick spent three years persuading him in what the author describes as "a single phone call lasting three years, with interruptions."[5]
In 1985, Kubrick contacted Hasford to work on the screenplay with him and Herr,[6] often talking to Hasford on the phone three to four times a week for hours at a time.[9] Kubrick had already written a detailed treatment.[6] The two men got together at Kubrick's home every day, breaking down the treatment into scenes. From that, Herr wrote the first draft.[6] The filmmaker was worried that the title of the book would be misread by audiences as referring to people who only did half a day's work and changed it to Full Metal Jacket after discovering the phrase while going through a gun catalogue.[6] After the first draft was completed, Kubrick would phone in his orders and Hasford and Herr would mail in their submissions.[10] Kubrick would read and then edit them with the process starting over. Neither Hasford nor Herr knew how much they contributed to the screenplay and this led to a dispute over the final credits.[10] Hasford remembers, "We were like guys on an assembly line in the car factory. I was putting on one widget and Michael was putting on another widget and Stanley was the only one who knew that this was going to end up being a car."[10] Herr says that the director was not interested in making an anti-war film but that "he wanted to show what war is like."[5]
At some point, Kubrick wanted to meet Hasford in person but Herr advised against this, describing The Short-Timers author as a "scary man."[5] Kubrick insisted. They all met at Kubrick's house in England for dinner. It did not go well, and Hasford was subsequently shut out of the production.[5]
Through Warner Bros., Kubrick advertised a national search in the United States and Canada. The director used videotape to audition actors. He received over 3,000 videotapes. His staff screened all of the tapes and eliminated the unacceptable ones. This left 800 tapes for Kubrick to personally review.[6]
Former U.S. Marine Drill Instructor Ermey was originally hired as a technical adviser and asked Kubrick if he could audition for the role of Hartman. However Kubrick, having seen his portrayal as Drill Instructor SSgt Loyce in The Boys in Company C, told him that he was not vicious enough to play the character. In response, Ermey made a videotape of himself improvising insulting dialogue towards a group of Royal Marines while people off-camera pelted him with oranges and tennis balls. Ermey, in spite of the distractions, rattled off an unbroken string of insults for 15 minutes, and he did not flinch, duck, or repeat himself while the projectiles rained on him.[6] Upon viewing the video, Kubrick gave Ermey the role, realizing that he "was a genius for this part".[8] Ermey's experience as a real-life DI during the Vietnam era proved invaluable, and he fostered such realism that in one instance, Ermey barked an order off-camera to Kubrick to stand up when he was spoken to, and Kubrick instinctively obeyed, standing at attention before realizing what had happened. Kubrick estimated that Ermey came up with 150 pages of insults, many of them improvised on the spot — a rarity for a Kubrick film. According to Kubrick's estimate, the former drill instructor wrote 50% of his own dialogue, especially the insults.[11]
The original plan envisaged Anthony Michael Hall starring as Private Joker, but after eight months of negotiations, a deal between Kubrick and Hall fell through.[12] Kubrick offered Bruce Willis a role, but Willis had to turn down the opportunity because of the impending start of filming on the first 6 episodes of Moonlighting.[13]
Kubrick shot the film in England: in Cambridgeshire, on the Norfolk Broads, and at the former Beckton Gas Works, Newham (east London). A former RAF and then British Army base, Bassingbourn Barracks, doubled as the Parris Island Marine boot camp.[8] A British Army rifle range near Barton, outside Cambridge, was used in the scene where Private Pyle is congratulated on his shooting skills by Hartman. The disused Beckton Gas Works, on the Isle of Dogs a few miles from central London, portrayed the ruined city of Huế. Kubrick worked from still photographs of Huế taken in 1968 and found an area owned by British Gas that closely resembled it and was scheduled to be demolished.[11] To achieve this look, Kubrick had buildings blown up and the film's art director used a wrecking ball to knock specific holes in certain buildings over the course of two months.[11] Originally, Kubrick had a plastic replica jungle flown in from California but once he looked at it was reported to have said, "I don't like it. Get rid of it."[14] The open country is Cliffe marshes, also on the Thames, with 200 imported Spanish palm trees[7] and 100,000 plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong.[11]
Kubrick acquired four M41 tanks from a Belgian army colonel (a fan), and Sikorsky H-34 Choctaw helicopters (actually Westland Wessex painted Marine green). Although the Wessex was a licensed derivative of the Sikorsky H-34, the Wessex substituted two gas turbine engines for the H-34's radial (piston) engine. This resulted in a much longer and less rounded nose than that of the Vietnam era H-34. Kubrick also obtained a selection of rifles, M79 grenade launchers and M60 machine guns from a licensed weapons dealer.[8]
Modine described the shoot as difficult: the filming location for Vietnam, Beckton Gas Works, was a toxic and environmental nightmare for the entire film crew. Asbestos and hundreds of chemicals poisoned the earth and air. Modine documents details of shooting at Beckton in his book, Full Metal Jacket Diary. During the 'Boot Camp' sequence of the film, Modine and the other recruits had to endure the rigors of Marine Corp training, including having Ermey yelling at them for ten hours a day during the shooting of the Parris Island scenes. For film continuity, each recruit had to have his head shaved once a week.[15]
At one point during filming, Ermey had a car accident, broke all of his ribs on one side and was out for four-and-half months.[11] Cowboy's death scene shows a building in the background that resembles the famous alien monolith in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick described the resemblance as an "extraordinary accident."[11]
During filming, Hasford contemplated legal action over the writing credit. Originally the filmmakers intended Hasford to receive an "additional dialogue" credit, but he wanted full credit.[10] The writer took two friends and sneaked onto the set dressed as extras only to be mistaken by a crew member for Herr.[9]
Kubrick's daughter Vivian — who appears uncredited as a news-camera operator at the mass grave — shadowed the filming of Full Metal Jacket and shot eighteen hours of behind-the-scenes footage for a potential "making-of" documentary similar to her earlier film documentary on Kubrick's The Shining; however, in this case, her work did not come to fruition. Snippets of her work can be seen in the 2008 documentary Stanley Kubrick's Boxes.
In addition to her work preparing a documentary Vivian Kubrick, under the alias "Abigail Mead", wrote the score for the film. According to an interview which appeared in the January 1988 issue of Keyboard Magazine, the film was scored mostly with a Fairlight CMI synthesizer (the then-current Series III edition) and a Synclavier. For the period music, Kubrick went through Billboard's list of Top 100 Hits for each year from 1962–1968 and tried many songs but "sometimes the dynamic range of the music was too great, and we couldn't work in dialogue."[11]
A single, "Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor)," credited to Mead and Nigel Goulding, was released to promote the film. It incorporates Ermey's drill cadences from the film.[16] The single reached #2 on the UK pop charts.[17]
Full Metal Jacket received a limited release on June 26, 1987 in 215 theaters.[1] Its opening weekend saw it accrue $2,217,307, an average of $10,313 per theater, ranking it the number 10 film for the June 26–28 weekend.[1] It took a further $2,002,890 for a total of $5,655,225 before entering wide release on July 10, 1987, at 881 theaters — an increase of 666.[1] The July 10–12 weekend saw the film gross $6,079,963, an average of $6,901 per theater, and rank as the number 2 grossing film. Over the next four weeks the film opened in a further 194 theaters to its widest release of 1,075 theaters before closing two weeks later with a total gross of $46,357,676; making it the number 23 highest grossing film of 1987.[1][18]
Full Metal Jacket received critical acclaim following release, attaining a 97% aggregate approval rating based on 58 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, or an average rating of 8.2 out of 10.[19][20] Among those deemed "Top Critics" by Rotten Tomatoes, the film earned 75% approval from 8 reviews. Review aggregate Metacritic gave it a score of 78 out of 100, which indicates a "generally favorable" response, based on 18 reviews.[21] Reviewers generally reacted favorably to the cast, Ermey in particular,[22][23] and the film's first act in recruit training,[24][25] but several reviews were critical towards the latter part of the film set in Vietnam and what was considered a "muddled" moral message in the finale.[26][27]
Richard Corliss of Time called the film a "technical knockout", praising "the dialogue's wild, desperate wit; the daring in choosing a desultory skirmish to make a point about war's pointlessness" and "the fine, large performances of almost every actor," believing, at the time, that Ermey and D'Onofrio would receive Oscar nominations. Corliss also appreciated "the Olympian elegance and precision of Kubrick's filmmaking."[22] Empire's Ian Nathan awarded the film 3 out of 5 stars, saying that it is "inconsistent" and describing it as "both powerful and frustratingly unengaged." Nathan felt that after leaving the opening act following the recruit training, the film becomes "bereft of purpose" but summarized his review by calling it a "hardy Kubrickian effort that warms on you with repeated viewings." Nathan also praised Ermey's "staggering performance".[25] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "harrowing, beautiful and characteristically eccentric." Canby echoed praise for Ermey, calling him "the film's stunning surprise...he's so good - so obsessed - that you might think he wrote his own lines". Canby also said that D'Onofrio's performance should be noted with "admiration," and called Modine "one of the best, most adaptable young film actors of his generation." Canby concluded that Full Metal Jacket was "a film of immense and very rare imagination."[28]
Film4 awarded the film 5 out of 5 stars and added to the praise for Ermey, saying his "performance as the foul-mouthed Hartman is justly celebrated and it's difficult to imagine the film working anything like as effectively without him." The review also preferred the opening training to the later Vietnam sequence, calling it "far more striking than second and longer section." Film4 commented that the film ends abruptly but felt that "it demonstrates just how clear and precise the director's vision could be when he resisted a fatal tendency for indulgence." Film4 concluded that "Full Metal Jacket ranks with Dr. Strangelove as one of Kubrick's very best."[24] Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader called it "Elliptical, full of subtle inner rhymes...and profoundly moving, this is the most tightly crafted Kubrick film since Dr. Strangelove, as well as the most horrific".[29] Variety called the film as an "intense, schematic, superbly made" drama "loaded with vivid, outrageously vulgar military vernacular that contributes heavily to the film's power," but felt that it never develops "a particularly strong narrative." The cast performances were all labeled "exceptional" with Modine being singled out as "embodying both what it takes to survive in the war and a certain omniscience."[23]
Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert held a dissenting view, calling the film "strangely shapeless" and awarding it 2.5 stars out of 4. Ebert called it "one of the best-looking war movies ever made on sets and stage" but felt this was not enough to compete with the "awesome reality of Platoon, Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter." Ebert also criticized the film's second act set in Vietnam, saying the "movie disintegrates into a series of self-contained set pieces, none of them quite satisfying" and concluded that the film's message was "too little and too late", having been done by other Vietnam war films. However, Ebert also gave praise to Ermey and D'Onofrio, saying "these are the two best performances in the movie, which never recovers after they leave the scene."[27] Time Out London also disliked the film saying "Kubrick's direction is as steely cold and manipulative as the régime it depicts," and felt that the characters were underdeveloped, adding "we never really get to know, let alone care about, the hapless recruits on view."[26]
British television channel Channel 4 voted it number 5 on its list of the greatest war films ever made.[30] In 2008, Empire placed Full Metal Jacket number 457 on its list of the The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.[31]
Full Metal Jacket was nominated for eleven awards worldwide between 1987 and 1989 including an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay,[32][33] two BAFTA Awards for Best Sound and Best Special Effects,[34] and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for Ermey.[35] Ultimately it won five awards, three from organisations outside of the United States: Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The film won Best Foreign Language Film from the Japanese Academy, Best Producer from the David di Donatello Awards,[36] Director of the Year from the London Critics Circle Film Awards,[37] and Best Director and Best Supporting Actor from the Boston Society of Film Critics Awards, for Kubrick and Ermey respectively.[38] Of the five awards won, four were awarded to Kubrick.
| Year | Award | Category | Recipient | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | BAFTA Awards | Best Sound | Nigel Galt, Edward Tise and Andy Nelson | Nominated | [34] |
| Best Special Effects | John Evans | Nominated | [34] | ||
| 1988 | 60th Academy Awards | Best Adapted Screenplay | Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr and Gustav Hasford | Nominated | [32][33] |
| Boston Society of Film Critics Awards | Best Director | Stanley Kubrick | Won | [38] | |
| Best Supporting Actor | R. Lee Ermey | Won | |||
| David di Donatello Awards | Best Producer - Foreign film | Stanley Kubrick | Won | [36] | |
| Golden Globes | Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture | R. Lee Ermey | Nominated | [35] | |
| London Critics Circle Film Awards | Director of the Year | Stanley Kubrick | Won | [37] | |
| Writers Guild of America | Best Adapted Screenplay | Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford | Nominated | ||
| 1989 | Kinema Junpo Awards | Best Foreign Language Film Director | Stanley Kubrick | Won | |
| Awards of the Japanese Academy | Best Foreign Language Film | Stanley Kubrick | Nominated |
Film scholar Greg Jenkins has done a detailed analysis of the transition of the story from book to film.[39] The novel is in three parts, while the film largely discards Part III, and massively expands the book's relatively brief first part about the boot camp on Parris Island. This gives the film a duplex structure of telling two largely separate stories connected by the same characters, one which Jenkins believes is consistent with statements Kubrick made back in the 1960s of wanting to explode the usual conventions of narrative structure.[40]
Sergeant Hartman (renamed from the book's Gerheim) is given an expanded presence in the film. The film is more focused on Private Pyle's incompetence as a presence that weighs negatively on the rest of the troop. In the film, unlike the novel, he is the "sole problem recruit".[41] The film omits "Hartman's" disclosure to other troops that he thinks Pyle might be mentally unstable, a "Section Eight." By contrast, Hartman congratulates Pyle that he is "born again hard". Jenkins believes that to have Hartman be in any way social with the troops would have upset the balance of the film, which depends on the spectacle of ordinary soldiers coming to grips with Hartman as a force of nature embodying a killer culture.[42]
Various episodes from the book have been both cut and conflated with others in the film. Sequences such as Cowboy's introduction of the "Lusthog Squad" have both been drastically shortened and supplemented by material from other sections of the book. Although the book's final third section was largely dropped, pieces of material in it have been inserted into other episodes of the film.[43] The climactic episode with the sniper is a conflation of two episodes in the book, one from part two, and another from part three. Jenkins sees the film's handling of this episode as both more dramatic but less gruesome than its counterpart in the novel.
The film often has a more tragic tone than the book, which often falls back on callous humor. Joker in the film remains a model of humane thinking, as evidenced by his moral struggle in the sniper episode and elsewhere. His struggle in the film is to overcome his own meekness, rather than to compete with other marines. Hence, the film omits his eventual domination over Animal Mother.[44]
The film omits the death of the character Rafterman. Jenkins believes this allows us to reflect on his personal growth in the film, and speculate on his further growth afterwards. Jenkins also believes it would not fit into the film's plot structure.[43]
Compared to Kubrick's other works, the themes of Full Metal Jacket have received little attention from critics and reviewers. Most reviews have focused on military brainwashing themes in the boot camp training section of the film, while seeing the latter half of the film as more confusing and disjointed in content. Rita Kempley of the Washington Post wrote, "it's as if they borrowed bits of every war movie to make this eclectic finale."[45] Roger Ebert explained, "The movie disintegrates into a series of self-contained set pieces, none of them quite satisfying."[46] However, Julian Rice in his book Kubrick's Hope sees the second part of the film as continuing the psychic journey of Joker in trying to come to grips with human evil.[47]
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