Full Metal Jacket

I'd never seen this movie before, which seemed sad, so when there were no good movies on the new releases racks to partake in, I had to indulge. My first clue that this movie was something to be reckoned with was the fact I had never seen it on television. If they can edit down Se7en for cable, then this movie must whoop the FCC's ancient booty.

I brought the DVD out to the car and showed my choice to Mr. Joon. The cover shown a combat helmet, across which was written "born to kill", and was adorned with a peace sign pin. "The duality of man." said Mr. Joon, which meant nothing to me at them time, but set the stage. There's something there, if you can scratch away the grimy surface. Beneath the pussy jokes and the rough exterior of men beating each other with bars of soap and the far too young and bitter Vietnamese prostitutes, there does lie a moral. A moral that tells of just what Joker says: "the duality of man". (I like how everything Joker says if half a joke. Its a truth with a smile. That's beside the point.)

The point is this: we expect our men to be one way and they better be that way or they're in for it. We expect our men to go to war and fight. We expect them to win, because if they don't then not only are they failures, but our country looks like one too, and in turn so do all the people within it. So off they go, and they better smile like they mean it when they do. They have to go where the people are trying to kill them, look through their sights at another person and shoot them down lest they be shot. They shoot again and again.

That's all their life is after a while, you know? This life. These men that try to kill them everyday, who they are supposed to kill first lest they shame their country. When that's your life every day, then dammit, just screw the girl. She doesn't seem to care and you're so drunk with disillusionment and bitterness that you couldn't care less either. What do you do when you hate and kill for your own survival, and can't let morality break that down? You want peace; you want to go home and forget anything that ever was or will be of what you did but at the same time you can't care about that hippie bullshit because that's not the thinking that will get you through the day alive.

That’s what it is. That way of thinking, of living and surviving, that is the layer that surrounds their hearts and thoughts to get them through it with some semblance of humanity. That state of being is their full metal jacket.

Still, if I had to hear one more “gook” or “me so horny” or any of that crap I was going to barf a little in my mouth. So this was a tough movie to rate. Obviously Stanley Kubrick is a genius of astounding proportions. However, to me there’s realism and then there’s just a lot of potty talk and ickiness. By the end I totally thought they were going to rape that girl as she lay shot and dying and begging for death, because that’s how much it all disturbed me. The Joon rating Full Metal Jacket receives is Pretty Damn Cool. Because it is definitely something you need to see once, if only to know where that whole, “Me love you long time, sucky sucky 5 dollah” thing comes from.