Full Metal Jacket

« Born to Kill » is the inscription on the helmet of Sergeant James T. "Joker" Davis the protagonist of FMJ, but this is just what he thinks, or let's say that's what he was told to think, through eight weeks of intense physical and psychological strain under the vicious command of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (Lee Ermey), a training many others can't or won't survive, but the protagonist is a smart dude a person who would be a computer geek if he was born a decade later, he has a good journalistic pen, but he is cursed by his birth certificate to be at draft age in the midst of the craziness of the Vietnam war.

War is nothing new, I bet even Neanderthals had their wars, warlords, politicians, businessman, and even media adding oil to the fire so it never consumes, what is great about this movie, which some consider to be the greatest war movie ever, is that it has a neutral point of view on both the training field and the battlefield, the soldiers and officers are not heroes, they are plain guys from poor to medium upbringing, some are simple, others are smart, none heroic, they have various skin colors and various cultural backgrounds, and above all have the same rifles, and are threatened by the same angel of death.

Death on the battlefield is like fish in the sea, or whatever better metaphor you might find, it is omnipresent, as depressing as it sounds, it puts an emphasis on the here and now, because people tend to be dissatisfied based on the assumption that they will live a long time ahead, but the immediacy of death and the blurriness of the ideal brings out the best and the worst in everyone, again, nothing heroic, this movie does a great job of being as realistic as possible, from casting choices, to camera moves, to set design, it has this sense of atmospherics that sucks you in, and when people eventually die, they just die, they don't find out about hidden wisdom, there is no dramatic closeup on them, they only stare at the other world, as they are going towards it.

Speaking of casting, you almost can't recognize anybody, the protagonist is private joker (Matthew Modine) as the journalist soldier for «star and stripes» the one in charge of keeping the morale of the troops, by covering various operations, and Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence (Vincent d'Onofrio), the guy who is too fragile to take it all, and all the others are really names I could not identify, there clear message being, «no stars», would they have casted Charles Bronson, it would become a Bronson movie, and eventually it will be about a special guy on the battlefield, none of it here, just regular guys stuck in a game bigger then them.

Matter of fact this movie has the feeling of playing a war video game, something like «Call of Duty», and it is obvious that these games took inspiration in here, especially when it comes to level design, It's not a mockumentary or something like that, it is just a brilliant war movie, at the end of everyday soldiers are glad to be alive, they don't know what's ahead, deep inside them they know they will not make it probably, but they live in the moment, and the Camera of Stanley Kubrick is so neutral, it's just there, even the Vietnamese are feeling and behaving the same on their side of this huge chess board, all corpses look the same, smell the same, and governments never learn, they did the same thing again in Somalia, destroyed a country that was already devastated by famine and plagues, then they just did the same in Iraq, and the mess they left behind in there was so big, that I hope it will inspire the new Kubriks , Copollas and the Stones some other masterpieces, Cinema at it's best can be transcending, it can document and educate, and show instead of telling, and that's why we love it, despite all the «transformers» and the chick flicks they keep on throwing on our faces, this Kubrick will resurrect your faith in the silver screen if you lost it, and in a world of prtence, you surely need it as hell.

Year: 1987
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Starring: Matthew Modine, Vincent D'Onofrio, Lee Ermey