Before I review FULL METAL JACKET, I'm gonna set my table a lil bit, because it's always good to start a piece of writing with a huge digression.

I recently watched Ken Burns & Lynn Novick's THE VIETNAM WAR series. I thought it was the best of their work so far, combining their usual rigorous academic approach with a more visceral visual presentation than they are typically able to offer. The war in Indochina was so thoroughly documented that there is raw footage for almost every topic that was covered, replacing the classic Ken Burns' "panning over black-and-white photographs and reading letters" style with something far more immediate. As for the geo-political narrative of the series, there are some problems with the Burns & Novick perspective.

But while I acknowledge these issues, I think that this ideological critique (which, as a leftist, I sympathize with) overblows its grievances and misses some of the nuance of the series. The "Not Our Fault" argument is certainly valid for the first episode, but as the series progresses, that illusion quickly vaporizes. The "Violence on Both Sides" argument makes some fair points about false equivalence and juxtaposition, but Burns & Novick do not conceal the ghastly brutality of what was inflicted on the people of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. The series plainly states the vastly skewed death toll: 58,000+ Americans to 3,000,000+ Indochinese. The "Coming Together" argument is the most compelling critique to me. I do agree that the series aims for closure for narrative purposes that is not necessarily reflective of historical reality. For example a lot of time is spent on the topic of the ongoing recovery of bodies of American servicemen from Vietnamese territory, while relatively little time is spent on the topic of unexploded landmines and other ordinance that still litter the Vietnamese countryside. Overall, the critiques of the Burns & Novick series seem to take issue with the fact that it is made by Americans with an intrinsically American perspective, despite the efforts made to include diverse Vietnamese voices in the story. I was initially dubious (sponsors of the series include the Koch Brothers and the Bank of America!) but I found the Burns & Novick series to be a self-effacing depiction of American imperialism.

Nevertheless, as a necessary corrective to any misconceptions that the Burns & Novick series may have planted in my brain, I followed their series up by reading Nick Turse's book "Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam". Turse's book is less a history than a stomach-churning accounting of American war crimes, making a simple argument that incidents like the My Lai massacre were not one-off anomalies committed by the occasional low-rank sociopath, but sanctioned military policy.

All of this brings me to FULL METAL JACKET. After watching THE VIETNAM WAR and reading "Kill Anything That Moves" I felt it appropriate to revisit some of the great Vietnam War movies. As one of maybe 50 or 60 films I owned on VHS as an impressionable young film guy, I watched FULL METAL JACKET maybe two dozen times. I had very little understanding of the historical context at the time, so my appreciation for the movie can mostly be chalked up to a general fascination with Kubrick's god-tier directorial prowess, and a posturing appreciation for the hoo-rah machismo of war movies. But I don't think I've rewatched FULL METAL JACKET in at least 15 years. If I'm in the mood for Kubrick I almost invariably go for 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY or THE SHINING instead, and if I want to switch it up I usually go for one of his films I've only seen, like, half a dozen times. BARRY LYNDON or PATHS OF GLORY, for example. In my memory, however, FULL METAL JACKET stood out as the most critical Vietnam War movie ever made, maybe the most mainstream anti-war movie in cinematic history that is legitimately anti-war. It's not COME AND SEE or whatever, in that it doesn't make you want to claw your eyes out and move into a monastery, but almost no one has seen COME AND SEE. Everyone has seen FULL METAL JACKET.

So, how does it hold up? Very well, in fact.

The film is structured very simply, consisting of three long chapters, that do not conform to the traditional Syd Field "three act structure", per se: the Parris Island training sequence, the episodic Tet Offensive sequence, and the Huế sniper sequence.

The Parris Island sequence is single-mindedly designed to dramatize the basic dehumanization of military service. After an introductory head-shaving scene (that I could swear contains some archival footage that also pops up in the Burns & Novick series) we are immediately thrust into the harsh domain of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. As Hartman unleashes unrelenting torrents of abuse on his cadets, we meet some of our principle maggots, namely our main character Private Joker, and the ill-fated Private Pyle. Joker, affecting a bad John Wayne impression, is capable of ironic detachment, and is thus able to preserve his core personality throughout the rigours of basic training. His ironic detachment is reflective of the American public at large: he's aware of how fucked up his situation is, but he's able to emotionally disassociate from it without too much effort. Pyle, on the other hand, is emotionally wide open. He begins basic training with an idiot grin and concludes it with a bullet in his skull. The marine corps intend to turn him into a killing machine, and they are wholly successful in their efforts, although not for the purpose they intended. If anything, Pyle's reaction to his experience is more sane than the rest of his cohort, in that he actually responds to psychological pressure in a commensurate degree to the amount of pressure being applied.

Pyle: "I am in a world of shit."

If you read enough Letterboxd reviews of this movie, you'll notice a trend: people like this Parris Island sequence a lot, but are mildly disappointed by the Vietnam sequences that follow. The popular appeal of the Parris Island sequence is, I believe, entirely by design. Kubrick is deliberately drawing you into his Vietnam War, "recruiting" you with an entertaining (bordering on comedic) and largely self-contained character piece. You're not meant to contemplate the larger implications of the war too deeply here, you're just meant to laugh at Hartman's "jokes" and drill yourself for what will surely be some ass-kicking war sequences in the back half. Then it shows you what war, and the marine mindset, actually does to people. From the blanket party scene to the final showdown between Pyle, Hartman, and Joker in the head, the glib humor turns chilly.

And then we're suddenly in Da Nang, a jarring stylized transition set to Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots are Made for Walkin'". The organized regimentation of the Parris Island sequence gives way to a disorganized quagmire of scenes that occur before, during, and after the Tet Offensive. Much like the real war experience, form matches content. The Tet Offensive sequence is scattered and episodic, and forms the bulk of the film's ideological commentary, verging on a didactic approach that nevertheless still works. Joker is now a reporter for Stars and Stripes, accompanied by his photographer buddy Rafterman, and we catch up with him as he negotiates rates with a Vietnamese prostitute.

Rafterman: "You know what really pisses me off about these people? We're supposed to be helping them, and they shit all over us every chance they get. I just can't feature that."

Rafterman naively reiterates the American justification for the Vietnam War: he is a benevolent bringer of freedom to a people oppressed by the tyranny of communism, not an imperial cog suppressing a popular socialist revolution embraced by the majority of the population. Joker and Rafterman are a couple of big swinging dicks that are providing net negative assistance to the country they are ostensibly liberating, but Rafterman is deluded enough to think he's helping.

Joker's role as a reporter for Stars and Stripes is an illumination of American war propaganda, establishing in one relatively short scene a policy of "manufactured consent". Joker's lieutenant reminds him that the paper only runs two types of stories: "Grunts who give half their pay to buy gooks toothbrushes and deodorants, 'winning of hearts and minds', okay? And combat action that results in a kill, 'winning the war.'" He also hands down a new directive: the phrase "search and destroy" will now be replaced by the euphemistic "sweep and clear". Joker wants to write a substantial story about the possibility of a sneak attack on the Tet holiday, hearing rumblings about it from obscure channels, but his lieutenant is skeptical, instructing his team to instead cover an upcoming visit from Ann Margret.

The Da Nang scenes also establish a counter-intuitive dynamic: the marines we meet are restless and looking for action. One would assume that anyone who applied to write or shoot photos for a newspaper would be deliberately trying to keep themselves out of combat, but Joker and Rafterman both seem eager to prove themselves, to develop their 'war faces' and 'thousand yard stares'. The Tet Offensive provides them this opportunity, arriving at roughly the mid-point of the film just like it arrived at roughly the mid-point of the war itself.

Joker: "How can you shoot women, and children?"
Door Gunner: "Easy... you don't lead 'em so much."

In the wake of the Tet Offensive, Joker and Rafterman are sent to cover the fall of Huế. Events take a dark turn here as the narrative touches on the war crimes committed by American troops. A helicopter door gunner gleefully fires on civilian farmers, explaining that "anyone who runs is a VC. Anyone who stands still is a well-disciplined VC!" A soldier stands smiling for an interview over a lime pit of dead Vietnamese, possibly civilians. And a private named Crazy Earl introduces Joker and Rafterman to his "friend", a Vietnamese corpse that he has propped up and arranged for a "birthday party". These scenes are really only cursory examinations of American atrocities in Vietnam, the type of thing that wouldn't even make the footnotes of Turse's "Kill Anything That Moves". But together they convey an impression, if it was not already blisteringly clear, that Americans were the bad guys in this particular war. The character Animal Mother becomes something like an avatar for American imperialist aggression, almost a flip side doppelganger of Private Pyle. Adam Baldwin adopts a similar blank stare to Vincent D'Onofrio, but he is not emotionally conflicted: he is the killing machine the marine corps actually intended. It is not surprising that the most successful soldier in this environment is one who claims to be fighting for poontang, and informs a sympathetic black marine that "all n****** must hang".

Joker: "I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture, and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill!"

The final Huế sniper sequence emerges from the didactic ideology of the Tet Offensive sequence and returns the film to simple stakes and narrative clarity. As Joker, Rafterman, and the small band of marines they have joined attempt to navigate their way through Huế and cross the Perfume River, they are set upon by a mysterious sniper somewhere in the flaming buildings, who proceeds to pick them off one-by-one. The audience is manipulated into imagining a formidable opponent: the embodiment of Viet Cong guerilla reprisal. But the "strong enemy forces" are revealed to be one lone girl, probably no older than 16, still fighting from the ruins of her civilization. This sequence drives home the fundamental reality of the Vietnam War: the Americans never had any chance of winning hearts and minds, when even the women and children were aligned against them. One could argue that FULL METAL JACKET does not communicate the gross disproportionality of casualties in the Vietnam war (again, 58,000+ Americans to 3,000,000+ Indochinese). And in fact, the Huế sniper sequence actually shows one North Vietnamese sniper inflicting asymmetric damage on three American soldiers. But the symbolic value of the sniper's identity makes the message clear: the Vietnam War was, at root, an occupying American force suppressing a popular people's uprising.

Joker: "I am so happy that I am alive, in one piece and short. I'm in a world of shit... yes. But I am alive. And I am not afraid."

A lot of reviewers seem to feel that this ending is anti-climactic, or that its thematic message is ambiguous. But viewed in the context of Joker's character arc, it is a concise distillation of the war. Joker does earn his war face in the end, by putting a bullet in the dying sniper to end her suffering. However, he remains ironically detached from the horrors that he has participated in. In the very next scene he is one of many faceless silhouetted troops, singing "The Mickey Mouse March". He does *not* change in a fundamental way, he is still the recruit quoting John Wayne in the face of Hartman's abuse. Just like America, he is able to disassociate himself from his actions in Vietnam and move on, something that the Vietnamese and the Gomer Pyles of the world cannot do. Just like America, he has "Born to Kill" written on his helmet, and a peace sign button on his lapel.

Joker: "I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir."