Full Metal Jacket is the second to last of Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed filmography, like almost all his movies an adaptation of a novel: The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford. According to a co-worker at the online bookseller at which I am employed, The Short-Timers is not the most well-written book and never got much reprinting. However, Hasford was knowledgeable about his subject, being a combat correspondent in the Marine Corps during Vietnam. In fact his novel is a semi-autobiography, as the lead protagonist in it and the movie is James “Joker” Davis (Matthew Modine), a Marine who works with the Corps’ journalist branch.
If
there is one important theme in the movie, it’s that the military can have a
dehumanizing effect on its members. It has thus been cited by many as one of
the greatest anti-war films ever made. Despite this, Kubrick insisted that his
movie was neither anti-war nor pro-war. It’s just war the way it is. However, I
think it’s hard to believe this isn’t an anti-war movie when there’s literally
a maniacal chopper gunner who just casually guns down Vietnamese farmers while
helping transport Joker and his fellow correspondent to the front line.
That being said, Kubrick divides his movie into two, though not completely even parts. The first forty-five minutes or so focuses on the training of the recruit Marine at the real life training center on Parris Island, South Carolina, while the rest of the two-hour runtime takes place in Vietnam in 1968. The main protagonist, Joker, has his morality and humanity challenged throughout, leading to a grim choice at the end.
