The film Full Metal Jacket was directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1987 (IMDB), 20 years after the events described in the movie. It depicts several crucial moments of the Vietnam War, the Battle in Hue and the Tet Offensive, and trainings before. First of all, soldiers’ training does not seem to be realistic because of its cruelty and sarcasm from Hartman, the Senior Drill Instructor. Hartman treats soldiers in a way that hardly can be called humane. Yet the main aim of these episodes is to show that training is not a holiday and that soldiers should be prepared to all the horrors they might see during the war actions (Tunzelman). All in all, the Hartman’s policy of no mercy leads to his death and suicide of one of the soldiers.
The war scenes are also full of cruelty and plenty of realistic details. There is a lot of blood, mud, swearing. The main character is only a journalist, yet he is at epicenter of war. He is taking part in the Battle in Hue. Vietnamese started the attack during their big holiday, on Tet. And American soldiers were not prepared for that. Finally, the film concentrates on the try to kill teenage Vietnam sniper. It is not only a problem of finding her. After she was wounded a moral problem appears – whether a man has the right to kill unarmed person.
Most of the characters are killed at the end of the film. Joker, the main character is alive but he killed a teenage girl and there was no need in that because she could not shoot anymore. I think that Kubrick wanted to show that during the war a man is either killed of kill. And everybody kills a part of himself during the war.
Works Cited
Full Metal Jacket. IMDB. Web. 11 Nov 2013. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093058/>
Tunzelmann, Alex von “Full Metal Jacket: History Unzipped.” The Guardian 24 June 2010. Web. 11 Nov 2013. <http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/jun/24/full-metal-jacket-stanley-kubrick>
