Full Metal Jacket
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DVD details
Actor: Adam Baldwin, Bruce Boa, Peter Edmund, Tim Colceri, Vincent D'OnofrioPrimary Contributor: Vincent D'Onofrio
Primary Contributor: R. Lee Ermey
Primary Contributor: Matthew Modine
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Original recording remastered
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-06-12
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Full Metal Jacket
DVD Review: One Day in the Vietnam War
Summary: 2 Stars
Full Metal Jacket, 1987 film
Young men are getting a recruit's haircut; this marks them. They are given a welcoming speech by the Gunnery Sergeant. This is not a recruiting film. [The language is raw, but sort of funny in an exaggerated way.] They are taught to distinguish their rifle from a gun (artillery). "Gomer Pyle" has problems. [I wonder if such training was used in World War One and Two?] Gunny uses peer pressure against "Pyle". He has a "bad dream"! The Marines are taught how to shoot accurately. They finish their training and graduate. Most will go to Vietnam. There is a dramatic scene in the had when Leonard disobeys orders. [How realistic is this?]
They arrive in Vietnam and learn to communicate with the indigenous people and learn the culture. The correct phrase is "sweep and clear" not "search and destroy". There are two types of stories published. It is the Lunar New Year. The Marines shoot at the figures who are far away. Joker will be sent to cover the front. One man in a helicopter shoots at the people on the ground. They arrive at the combat zone and find dead civilians. Was that speech by the Colonel supposed to be funny? They meet some frontline troops. There is enemy action and casualties. They photograph the troops, who speak their lines. There is a scene that wouldn't be shown on the 7 o'clock news. The Marines patrol the ruins of a city to check the report. A booby trap claims a victim. The follow the map. Was there a mistake? The enemy shoots the point man to draw in those who want to rescue him. "Where's the sniper?" Did one man stand in an exposed position? The Marines are able to neutralized the sniper. This scene is drawn out for dramatic effect and commentary on combat. What song do they sing as a final comment?
The credits roll, the cast is shown in tiny type. "Filmed on location." The story was not designed to be a popular success. So who put up the funds for it? Was it designed to be a loss to offset profits from other successful investments? Oliver Stone's "Platoon" is still the best movie on the war on Vietnam. This is based on Gustav Hasford's novel "The Short-Timers". The first part of the film shows the psychological conditioning of recruits. Do they get any reconditioning before they are returned to civilian life? I wonder if anyone realized that forty years later America would be shipping factories to Vietnam and China?
DVD Review: Picture Quality is Great
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased a blu-ray DVD player and this Blu-Ray DVD (Full Metal Jacket) for my husband for Christmas. Realizing that this movie is older, I was concerned about the picture quality. I was also concerned because he is really into picture quality and this movie is one of his all-time favorites. The picture quality was great. We enjoyed the movie and seeing it with such vivid colors and clarity. I would recommend this to anyone. DVD Review: A War classic that shines high on High-Def!
Summary: 5 Stars
In the late 60's during the Vietnam war, it all starts off with the training of some unfortunate newbie soldiers are having trouble like Private Joker (Matthew Modine), Private Cowboy (Arliss Howard), Private Pyle (Vincient D'Onofrio), and others are being trained by hard mouthed drill Sergent Hartman (R. Lee Ermy). But Pyle keeps making mistakes and getting almost everyone in trouble as he later goes in the brink of his mind. After weeks of training, Joker with others like Eightball (Dorian Harewood, Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin) and others head to Vietnam to face the horrors of a living nightmare in the viet cong.
Harrowing, sometimes funny and violent Vietnam masterpiece from Stanley Kubrick is one of his best movies. It tells about the dangers of war and who is the true killer weither it's the marine or the enemy as the movie is a pure work of art from true cinematic genius himself Kubrick. It has dark humor thanks to the foul-mouthed drill sergent to some chilling moments like the soap-and-towel punishment of Private Pyle and of course an outstanding music score that is mellowed with a nice 60's soundtrack. The ending is just unbelivably surreal yet breathtaking and the performances are just nothing sort of outstanding, it's definitely a must see motion picture experience.
This Blu-Ray gives this classic the best picture and perfect sound quality you can see even in it's awesome widescreen format with some good extras like trailer, audio commentary and a featurette.
DVD Review: Different take on Vietnam
Summary: 4 Stars
While `Full Metal Jacket' is a Vietnam War film, don't go in looking for another `Platoon'. Directed by Stanley Kubrick, the key to understanding `Full Metal Jacket' is to realise that this is a Kubrick film first and a war film second. Both boot camp and battlefield merely serve as a backdrop for the usual Kubrick themes and ideas, and the final product bears more similarity to `Clockwork Orange' than to other war movies.
Being a Stanley Kubrick film, it goes without saying that the technical aspects of `Full Metal Jacket' are almost flawless. Kubrick makes excellent use of pans, long shots, close-ups, and point-of-view, and some of the battle scenes in the second half are given realism by the use of hand-held camerawork. Kubrick also does a good job in set design; using a British army base to substitute for US Marine boot camp was a no-brainer, but amazingly a dilapidated London gasworks was very realistically transformed into the Vietnamese city of Hue.
As has been often noted, the film is split into two parts, and in some ways is almost two independent films. The first half, dealing with Marine boot camp, is exceptional. R Lee Emery's performance as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman is terrifyingly realistic, and has to be seen to be believed. His interactions with his "maggots", especially his relentless abuse of Private Pyle, are at once hilarious and disturbing. And Vincent Donofrio as the misfit-turned-psychopath Pyle is also outstanding.
However, the brilliance of the first half means the second part of the film can fall a bit flat. One big problem is that Hartman and Pyle are the two most interesting characters in the movie, but are absent from the second half, meaning Joker has to carry this part of the film. But Joker is a fairly weak protagonist; he seems designed as an "everyman" that we can identify with, but his very ordinariness means he is often overshadowed by more interesting characters such as Hartman, Pyle, and (in the second half) Animal Mother. He's really just a pair of eyes through which we see the war and its effects on men.
One way in which `Full Metal Jacket' differs from other war films is that it doesn't have an explicit message. In typical Kubrick fashion, he refuses to settle for easy answers; he presents the characters and events as they are, and forces us to draw our own conclusions. On one hand, the absence of any "pass the bucket" flag-waving or preachy anti-war posturing is a welcome relief. But on the other, the rather detached and academic approach of the film can make it difficult to engage with. While there are some powerful scenes, `Full Metal Jacket' lacks the nightmarish feel of `Apocalypse Now', or the strong emotional pull of something like `The Deer Hunter'.
In all, `Full Metal Jacket' is a typical Kubrick film, so if you've seen any of his other movies, you'll probably already know whether you'll love it or hate it. Those expecting a gung-ho action fest or a film with a clear "point" might be disappointed, but open-minded war movie fans should find this a unique and challenging take on Vietnam.
DVD Review: A Word About Aspect Ratios
Summary: 5 Stars
Not a review, just a word about aspect ratios.
A lot of movies in the 80's were shot in a "soft" or "open matte" format, which means they were shot full frame (1.33:1) and later matted by cinema projectionists to fit the screen (remember that cinema screens used to be much more disparate in size and ratio than they are today). This practice also facilitated transfer to home video, since the negative was already in a full-frame format. It is a huge falacy that all films were shot in a "fixed" or "closed matte" format and then later panned and scanned for home video. You'd be surprized how many movies were actually shot full frame and soft matted in the theater (Schindler's List and Top Gun to name but two). The thing to remember when regarding movies shot in the seventies, eighties, and early nineties (or every Stanley Kubrick movie ever made) is that "widescreen format" or "theatrical aspect ratio" is not always synonymous with "original aspect ratio."
The original aspect ratio for FMJ is 1.33:1. The 1.85:1 version presented here will fill the entire screen of your 16:9 television, but it will do so by cropping out the top and bottom of the original frame.
Description of Full Metal Jacket
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.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
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
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