Full Metal Jacket Movie Analysis - Essay Example

?(Insert Full Metal Jacket Movie Review Full Metal Jacket is a movie that was released in 1987. It was directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. The movie is based on Gustav Hasford’s 1979 novel, “The Short Timers”. Basically the film revolves around a platoon of U.S marines. It highlights their experiences in war. However, it focuses more on two marine soldiers of the platoon in the Vietnamese new year festival during the Vietnam war. The film got its name from the full metal jacket bullet that is used by infantry riflemen when in the field. The film is set in the 1967 Vietnamese war. It is structured in two parts. The first part of the movie is in a boot camp at Parris Island. A group of new US marine corps arrive at the boot camp for basic training. When they arrive at the camp, they are first made to shave their heads before they proceed to meeting Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, who is their senior drill instructor. The main agenda of sending the new recruits to the boot camp is to prepare them for the war. Hartman therefore uses extremely harsh tactics to train the marine corps. The draconian, or harsh tactics are aimed at turning the marines in to hardened soldiers that are ready and fit for combat. The three main marines from the new recruits group are privates “Cowboy”, “Joker”, and “Gomer Pyle”. Private ‘Gomer Pyle” earns the nickname after the wrath of sergeant Hartman befalls on him. Hartman’s continued efforts to discipline Pyle are not fruitful. He therefore opts for pairing the private with Joker. After the two are paired, Pyle’s performance at the boot camp begins to improve. However, Hartman finds a contraband jelly doughnut in Pyle’s foot locker. It is against the rules of the camp to have such paraphernalia. What happens next is that Hartman advances his punishment towards Pyle because he believes that his peers are not helping him reform as much as the Sergeant would want. From that particular moment, the whole platoon is punished for the mistakes that Pyle does. The drill master makes it worse by passing that Pyle himself will not be punished for his mistakes. The platoon realizes that they will be constantly punished if they do not help in reforming their fellow marine. They throw a blanket party for the lad; they restrain him to his bunk,and give him a beating using bars of soap that have been wrapped up with towels. The torture is their way of retaliating to the suggestion of Hartman. This torture tactic works and Pyle reforms to a model marine. However, he exemplifies withdrawal symptoms as a result of the beating that he receives because he begins to make conversation with his riffle. The marine corps finally graduate and are given their Military Occupational Specialty. During their last night at the camp, Joker finds Pyle in the bathroom loading his riffle and reciting the Rifleman’s creed. Joker tries to calm him down but the commotion wakes up the whole platoon together with Hartman. Unfortunately, Pyle kills Hartman after he tries to confront him to surrender and then commits suicide. In the first part of the movie, Kubrick puts the viewer in the place where they feel like they are part of the whole training process. He highlights how the naive marines are slowly transformed through the rigorous training process. Kubrick also maintains a certain athleticism in the film through the obstacle courses and the chants the sergeant makes the marines to repeat. It also highlights the psychological effects that the whole training process can have on a marine, as exemplified by the eventualities of Pyle’s discipline from both Hartman and the other marines. The second part of the movie is in the rubble that was Hue. The Marine Corps kids-turned-killers are now in the battle ground. It is in January of 1968; Joker is now a sergeant and is a marine war correspondent for stars and stripes. At the base where Joker is a correspondent, there is a Private first class marine, Rafterman, who is a combat photographer. As Joker explains to him about his experience in war, it arouses the interest in him to go to combat. As Joker is being mocked of the fact that his experience in combat is vague since he lacks the thousand yard stare, the North Vietnamese army tries to overrun the base. The marines engage in a battle with the Vietnamese soldiers and manage to retain their base. The following day, Joker and Rafterman are sent to PhuBai and on their way they come across the Lusthog Squad. Cowboy is the sergeant of this squad and Joker accompanies the squad to the battle of Hue. At the battle, the commander of the platoon is killed. The squad leader is later killed during a patrol in the Hue area and Cowboy is therefore left in charge of the platoon. After being pinned down by the fierce fighting men, the squad experiences a sniper problem. There is a sniper who the squad finds difficult to locate. By the time the snipers location is revealed, Cowboy and two other marines are shot dead. Joker identifies the location of the sniper and when he tries to shoot, his riffle jams. Rafterman shoots the sniper. To the squad’s surprise, the sniper is a girl. Joker is then given the chance to kill the girl so that he can earn his thousand yard stare. The squad march towards their camp singing a song of victory. This second part of the film shows the viewer how the some of the marines, though trained to be killers, are still humane. Joker is hesitant to kill the girl but eventually manages. It shows how much the marines value dignity in times of war and how much it means to them when they kill an enemy. Marilyn Young’s “The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990” is to some extent related to the movie “Full Metal Jacket”. The book documents the occurrences that took place in Vietnam and sources information from government documents, poems by the veterans, speeches, among other primary sources. The relation of the film to the book is the fact that there are unjustified reasons for the Vietnam war as the deaths of the marines who died while in the war. To begin with, the death of Pyle and Hartman was all self-inflicted because America had involved themselves in a war that they ought not to. In the preface of the book, Marilyn writes that the horrors inflicted on both the Vietnamese people and the marines has no conceivable justification. The battle in Hue also validates the sentiments of Marilyn in that the sniper, who happens to be a girl, begs to die not because she is patriotic but because she is afraid of what might happen to her while all she was doing was an act of self-defense against the American marines. The arguments and evidence that the author puts forward portray the American marines as blood thirsty killing machines and this is also reflected by how Hartman turns the privates, Pyle to be more specific, in to a self-destructive war machine. Works Cited Kubrick, Stanley, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford, Matthew Modine, Adam Baldwin, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Ermey, Dorian Harewood, Arliss Howard, Kevyn M. Howard, Ed O'Ross, Abigail Mead, Martin Hunter, and Gustav Hasford.Full Metal Jacket. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, 2001. Young, Marilyn B, John J. Fitzgerald, and A T. Grunfeld. Vietnam War: A History in Documents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print. Read More