Product Details

• Actors: Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio, Adam Baldwin, Dorian Harewood
• Directors: Stanley Kubrick
• Writers: Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, Gustav Hasford
• Producers: Stanley Kubrick, Jan Harlan, Michael Herr, Philip Hobbs
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Original recording reissued, NTSC
• Language: English, Vietnamese
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: September 23, 2005
• Run Time: 116 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (567 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000IQBL
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,068 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Stanley Kubrick's 1987, penultimate film seemed to a lot of people to be contrived and out of touch with the '80s vogue for such intensely realistic portrayals of the Vietnam War as Platoon and The Deer Hunter. Certainly, Kubrick gave audiences plenty of reason to wonder why he made the film at all: essentially a two-part drama that begins on a Parris Island boot camp for rookie Marines and abruptly switches to Vietnam (actually shot on sound stages and locations near London), Full Metal Jacket comes across as a series of self-contained chapters in a story whose logical and thematic development is oblique at best. Then again, much the same was said about Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a masterwork both enthralled with and satiric about the future's role in the unfinished business of human evolution. In a way, Full Metal Jacket is the wholly grim counterpart of 2001. While the latter is a truly 1960s film, both wide-eyed and wary, about the intertwining of progress and isolation (ending in our redemption, finally, by death), Full Metal Jacket is a cynical, Reagan-era view of the 1960s' hunger for experience and consciousness that fulfilled itself in violence. Lee Ermey made film history as the Marine drill instructor whose ritualized debasement of men in the name of tribal uniformity creates its darkest angel in a murderous half-wit (Vincent D'Onofrio). Matthew Modine gives a smart and savvy performance as Private Joker, the clowning, military journalist who yearns to get away from the propaganda machine and know firsthand the horrific revelation of the front line. In Full Metal Jacket, depravity and fulfillment go hand in hand, and it's no wonder Kubrick kept his steely distance from the material to make the point. --Tom Keogh

Additional Features

EDITOR'S NOTE: According to a Warner Home Video technician involved in the production of The Stanley Kubrick Collection, Kubrick authorized all aspects of the Collection, from the use of Digital Component Video (or "D-1") masters originally approved in 1989, to the use of minimalist screen menus, chapter stops, and (in the case of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining on DVD) supplementary materials. Full-screen presentation of The Shining and Full Metal Jacket was also approved by Kubrick, who recomposed his original framing, reportedly believing that those films looked best on video in the full-screen format. (In fact, the original theatrical aspect ratio of The Shining was 1.66:1, meaning that a relatively small portion of the image is lost.) Kubrick also chose mono over stereo, believing that inconsistencies in theatrical sound systems resulted in loss of control over theatrical presentation. In every respect, the Warner spokesman said, the films in the Collection remain as Kubrick approved them. Any future attempt to remaster or alter them would have to be approved by an appointee of the Kubrick estate.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well Worth Buying (again), October 25, 2007

By 

Michael A. Anderson - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Full Metal Jacket (Deluxe Edition) [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)

If you're a fan of this film like me and had bought the Blu-Ray or HD-DVD before and thought "This is hi-def?", then you're in for a treat. This newly remastered version has a sharper picture and better color image and new commentaries to boot. While not as stunning a transfer as "The Shining" or "2001", this is still a much improved re-release. Trade in your old copy and purchase with confidence.

281 of 316 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Jungian thing..., January 19, 2003

By 

Wing J. Flanagan (Orlando, Florida United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

Stanley Kubrick has been quoted as saying that with Full Metal Jacket, he wanted to make a war film, as opposed to an ANTI-war film. Condemning war is easily. It's a moral no-brainer. Trying to understand its nature is something far more challenging. As a result, Full Metal Jacket does something far more subtle and difficult than simply tell us that War is Hell (although it does that, too). To understand what and how, one must consider the film's structure:

Full Metal Jacket is split brutally into two parts, the first of which follows our hero, Private Joker (Matthew Modine) through basic training at Parris Island. A tubby, slow-witted misfit named Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio in an effective performance) is pushed too hard by the sadistic drill instructor Hartmann (R. Lee Ermey), and ends up killing both Hartman and himself in the Grand Guignol blackout sketch that ends part one.

It is at this point that many people have trouble with Full Metal Jacket, as the second half jumps to Viet Nam with no warning. Although Joker and another character named Cowboy (Arliss Howard) carry over from the first part of the film, they never so much as talk about Parris Island or the murder-suicide that marked their training there. It is as though that event happened in another universe, or at least a different movie.

The key to this apparent gaffe in story cohesion is contained in a scene where Joker is confronted by a Major over having "Born to Kill" scrawled on his helmet at the same time he wears a peace symbol on his flak jacket.

"I was trying to say something about the duality of man," he says, "...the Jungian thing, SIR!"

Duality of man; duality of film. There are (in the film's developing thesis) two possible motivations for killing people and breaking things - compassion (to defend freedom and turn back despotism; our OFFICIAL purpose in Viet Nam), and annihilation (the perverse joy of revenge, of domination; of blood-soaked victory).

Which motivation is more "moral"? Which leads to the "high-ground"? Doesn't annihilation always entail moral decay? And doesn't compassion always lead, ultimately, to peace, rather than violence? Through Joker's journey, from killer-in-training to killer-in-fact, we get a disturbing answer that, by its very simplicity, defies the kind of dumbed-down platitudes most war films (even really good ones like Kubrick's own Paths of Glory) try to feed us. The end finds Joker facing a wounded, disarmed sniper who has killed several of his fellow soldiers, as well as his best friend. In a typically Kubrickian reversal, the sadistic thing would be to "...leave her to the mother-lovin' rats..." (in other words, leave her in PEACE), rather than finish her off, which seems the more humane choice (through a paradoxical act of VIOLENCE). The sniper, a teenaged girl, even begs Joker to shoot her. It seems a simple, humanitarian act when he finally pulls the trigger, but in a long, ambiguous close-up on his face, we see the same demon lurking in Joker's eyes that haunted Lawrence back in Parris Island, just before he killed Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, then himself. The connection is clear; even the same music cue (by Kubrick's daughter Vivian, under the pseudonym of "Abigail Mead") can be heard on the sound track. By setting up a situation where both possible choices (to kill or not to kill) seem at once sadistic and kind, virtuous and evil, we are forced to see the situation on a more abstract level - where words fail, but a horrible insight reveals itself. The nature of war, it seems to suggest, is the nature of mankind - and vice-versa.

Kubrick's production values are first-rate. The DVD looks and sounds quite good, given the source material (Kubrick's muted palette is deliberate; his original sound mix was a fairly compressed monaural track). One particular use of a Steadicam with a slightly longer-than-ideal lens is inspired, giving us a view shaky enough to seem "real" but smooth enough to be fluid.

In the Kubrick canon, Full Metal Jacket is a hotly debated film. Whether you love it or hate it, just remember: it's a Jungian thing.

64 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As a former Marine, this movie holds a bit of nostalgia for me, March 20, 2008

By 

Ronald E. Jones "Just a regular guy." (Mount Juliet, TN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Full Metal Jacket (DVD)

I spent 1992-2001 in the Marine Corps Infantry. And this movie is a favorite among Marines no matter where they are.

While I think that it is absolutely inappropriate for children, you will have to make that decision on your own as a parent. But be warned, the language in this movie is very harsh.

R. Lee Ermey plays the part of Senior Drill Instructor Gunnery Seargeant Hartman (that's a mouthfull), his euphemisms, mannerisms and behavior are perfect. He absolutely nailed it.

If you've got any friends, relatives or acquaintances that are in the Corps, this is always a winner of a gift. Particularly if they are getting ready for deployment (ship life is a drag).

A caveat about reality...with the demise of conscription and the institution of the "all volunteer force," Drill Instructors no longer administer corporal punishment (i.e. they do not strike the recruits). Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a former recruit trying to embellish the experience (for amorous purposes no doubt), or smear the Marine Corps (for nefarious purposes no doubt).