I'll tell you why so serious

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam war epic Full Metel Jacket is a outstanding movie even visionary. I provably consider it to be the second greatest war film. No only be it's so powerful and disturbing, but also because it explores things that many war films usually don't. What it takes to be a soldier to fight in war and what does it do to the human brain? The question is "not good". It shows the dehumanizing of war in a way nothing could top it. It kinda fellas like two movies. "The bootcamp and the actual war" as James Rolfe said. The Story is basically through the eyes of a soldier nicknamed Private Joker while in bootcamp he witnesses his drill instructor Gunner Sergeant Hartman (R Le Erney) scream and abuse an overweight soldier nickedbamed Private Pyle. It starts off comediac and funny when Hartman pushes him to the limits and yells at him with his unbelievably hilarious rapid fires, but it soon gets dark and very horrific when Hartman turns his fellow soldier against for stealing a donut. They all have to do extra work because he can't do it. So one night they beat him up in his sleep in a gut-wrenching and powerful moment. This drives Private Pyle insane and he kills Hartman in revenge, and then kills himself. The second part is when Joker finally joins the war in Vietnam where we see what America has done to the country. And the soldiers Joker comes across are sick psychopaths, especially Animal Mother, because the training they had to go through before becoming soldiers.It's a brilliant movie, and R Le Erney gives a phenomenal performance that should have won him an Oscar. So, another brilliant film by Stanley Kubrick.

A film in two halves, the training segment is a perfect balance of dark humor & dramatic insanity, & the Vietnam segment is depressingly violent & visually impeccable. Though they are disparate, they work together to show the dehumanizing nature of all aspects of war: the ugliness, the complication, the lack of cinematic heroism. One of Kubrick's quickest paced, least opaque & most accessible films...& yet another directing masterpiece.

In USN bootcamp only rifles we had in our barracks were unloaded drill rifles with firing pins removed. They were strictly for carrying when marching and for doing manual of arms. I'm unfamiliar with USMC bootcamp policy but it seemed odd to me that Private Pyle had access to live ammunition in the barracks and had that loaded rifle that he shot his drill sgt. and himself with. Would someone familiar with USMC basic training rules explain whether this is true in real life?

Full Metal Jacket exposes the futility of war - more relevant than ever for the world today given the incessant wars being fought by the US around the world as I write this review. The movie adds a human touch to a war essentially fought in the Cold War chessboard of the 1960s and 1970s. The movie humanizes the suffering of death and raises legitimate questions about the purpose of the war; or indeed most wars. Living in Southeast Asia and having visited Vietnam several times the movie helps to understand one of the darkest periods in the region's history. No doubt, there were many silent global supporters of the war but still one recognizes the burden of history which contemporary Vietnamese are attempting to shed.The movie is a must watch fictional recreation for anyone interested in understanding the human aspect of war. Stanley Kubrick is a master film maker and Full Metal Jacket will not disappoint even the harshest of Kubrick's critics.