Full Metal Jacket (Deluxe Edition) [Blu-ray]

Full Metal Jacket (Deluxe Edition) [Blu-ray]
by Stanley Kubrick

Full Metal Jacket (Deluxe Edition) [Blu-ray]

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Blu-ray details

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Brand: Warner
Blu-ray: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language); Spanish (Original Language); German (Original Language); Italian (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2007-10-23
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 118627
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:

Marine recruits endure basic training under a leather-lunged D.I., then plunge into the hell of Vietnam. Matthew Modine heads a talented ensemble in this searing look at a process that turns people into killers.Running Time: 116 min. Format: BLU-RAY DISC Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR Age: 085391186274 UPC: 085391186274 Manufacturer No: 118627

Blu-ray Reviews of Full Metal Jacket (Deluxe Edition) [Blu-ray]

Blu-ray Review: Kubrick's last classic film manages to comment on both the 60's and the 80's
Summary: 4 Stars

First up a commentary about the qualty of the Blu-ray presentation then for those that are interested an analysis of Kubrick's film. The Blu-ray presentation is nearly flawless with a rich looking, terrific presentation with sharp images and an accurate representation of the color scheme of the film.

Note: Keep in mind that this film was ALWAYS grainy and Kubrick intentionally went with a "flat" look for the lighting of the film. However, an earlier edition of the film used an older HD master that didn't do the film any favors and had issues with the MPEG2 compression technology not being able to do an adequate job of keeping up with the shifting images (particularly in the latter half of the film. This probably isn't the disc to "knock your socks off" about Blu-ray because of the way it was shot. The new edition, however, accurately reflects the "look", textures and feel of the original film much more accurately than ANY other version to date.

The extras which include a commentary track by the cast (although curiously Matthew Modine is absent), is extremely good providing bits of detail about the production of the film. As Vincent D'onofrio points out Kubrick would probably be very unhappy if he was alive and knew there was a commentary track on the film. Kubrick wanted his films to be accepted without commentary or observations about those involved in the production (much like Spielberg)but it does help to have these observations to provide a context about the making of the film. As with the DVD we get a number of terrific featurette "Beyond Good and Evil" that provides insight into the making of the film and themes that Kubrick shapes.

How does this compare to the DVD? It looks better of course. How does this compare to the HD-DVD? Since both used the same encoding, it should look roughly the same but I haven't had time to do a side-by-side comparison. I can't compare this to the previous Blu-ray edition because I don't have it.

Any film is truly about the era the film was made in whether it be a period drama, science fiction or romantic comedy set in another time it captures the essence of that era, comments on it through the actions of the characters and behaviors and even the themes itself. This was true of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Jaws" as much as it is about "Citizen Kane" and "Vertigo". Great films, however, manage to also transcend the era about which they were made because they manage to touch on much more sweeping, grand (or in this case intimate) themes pursuing the essence of what it is to be human. "Full Metal Jacket" Stanley Kubrick's penultimate film fits in this category. It's as much about the Reagan/Bush era as it is about the Vietnam/60's experience and manages to be both clinical and intimate touching on the small moments that altered these individual's lives unlike the epic "Apocalypse Now" (to which this film is a terrific companion piece).

The story is, essentially, broken into two sections equally powerful and satiric; the first half is set on Paris Island where new recruits are indoctrinated into the military way--their identities are symbolically taken away as they are "reborn" with their heads shaved, they are given a new set of rules and codes to live by and are "reborn" to kill. This section focuses on the tools these men are also given to be both killing machines and survival with the hopes that they can retain some sense of humanity as well.

The second half focuses on their experience in Vietnam itself where they've "grown up" into the hunters they were retrained to be. Kubrick manages to be both satiric and, surprisingly, allows us the audience to connect with the characters wayward humanity in scenes where they interact. Most of the what's left of these people are the surface and underneath when unleased are deadly creatures as dark, base and cynical as the astronaunts in "2001" are intellectual, detacted and curious. It's a fascinating companion piece to Kubrick's films "Paths of Glory", "Dr. Strangelove", "2001" and "Clockwork" all of which touch on the same themes.

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Description of Full Metal Jacket (Deluxe Edition) [Blu-ray]

Marine recruits endure basic training under a leather-lunged D.I., then plunge into the hell of Vietnam. Matthew Modine heads a talented ensemble in this searing look at a process that turns people into killers.

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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