Full Metal Jacket (1987)

FULL METAL JACKET (1987) Four stars
I’m a firm believer in the “Full Metal Jacket Fallacy.”

Why, that’s when fools argue the first half of Stanley Kubrick’s FULL METAL JACKET is just brilliant and the second half flat-out sucks donkey testicles.

I’ve heard that argument many, many times in high school, college, and probably will continue to hear it for all my living days. You’re all wrong and I have no problem saying that.

Yes, I would agree the first half’s superior to the second, especially thanks to the powerhouse performances by R. Lee Ermey (1944-2018) and Vincent D’Onofrio, but the second half does not suck.

Granted, I do believe Kubrick’s Vietnam begins with our main protagonist Private Joker (Matthew Modine) and his sidekick Rafterman (Kevyn Major Howard) picking up a Da Nang hooker. In dialogue sampled by infamous rap group 2 Live Crew, she says, “Me so HORNY. Me love you long time.” Anyway, she goes on to guarantee “Me sucky-sucky. Me love you too much” and later on, we hear “Sucky! Sucky! Five dolla!,” rather infamous words. She’s relentless, I’ll give her that.

So, yeah, I can see why people think FULL METAL JACKET sucks during its second half, since hearing “suck” so many times conditioned them into believing the Vietnam portion sucked. I get it now, after many years of being mystified.

FULL METAL JACKET, as many already know, made several great contributions to the English language and it furthered cursing more than just about any other film in cinematic history. Ermey, in particular, used profanity like other artists use clay.

For example, I learned such timid little phrases as “I didn’t know they stacked shit that high,” “Only steers and queers come from Texas” (an Oklahoma variation on this line used in AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN), and “I bet you’re the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around.”

Not that I ever use such phrases, I promise.

That’s good, since I first watched FULL METAL JACKET around the age of 10 on home video. Right around that same moment in time, I first watched films like COMMANDO, THE TERMINATOR, PREDATOR, PLATOON, and STAND BY ME, all films that definitely had an impact on me, though I found their vulgarity funny at the time in a different way than years later. I did not know what most of the words meant upon first viewing, but found them funny in just how they sounded and how they were delivered. I picked up the meanings in later viewings, and I still find them all funny.

STAND BY ME, as well as THE BAD NEWS BEARS, especially proved revelatory, in that kids from different eras cussed.

I mean, STAND BY ME gave us the line “A pile of shit has a thousand eyes” and Tanner Boyle in THE BAD NEWS BEARS, why he’s one of the greatest foul-mouthed hooligans in history.

Ermey and D’Onofrio give two brilliant performances, but since they’re in a film directed by Kubrick (1927-99), they were not nominated for the Academy Awards.

That’s because Kubrick’s often considered the real star in his movies and he’s one of the greatest directors ever whose credits include THE KILLING (watch this one followed by RESERVOIR DOGS), PATHS OF GLORY, SPARTACUS, DR. STRANGELOVE, 2001, A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BARRY LYNDON, THE SHINING, and EYES WIDE SHUT.

Kubrick made 13 feature films during his career from 1953 through 1999. He was a photographer for Look magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and that background informs all his films. They all have indelible scenes.

Kubrick’s films grow better over time and they’re generally perceived more favorably after cold or hostile receptions during their first theatrical release. They have a timeless quality about them.

How often were the actors’ performances saluted by the industry?

Seemingly not very often.

Peter Ustinov won the 1961 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for SPARTACUS, probably the project least satisfactory personally to Kubrick.

Sue Lyon won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer for her work in LOLITA and James Mason, Shelley Winters, and James Mason were nominated along with Lyon.

Peter Sellers received a 1965 Academy Award Best Actor nomination for DR. STRANGELOVE. Sellers played three roles … and he lost the award to Rex Harrison, Professor Henry Higgins in MY FAIR LADY. (Lee Marvin won the next year for two roles in CAT BALLOU, so it must have been easier to win for two roles rather than three.)

All of the awards and nominations for 2001 were either technical (visual effects, cinematography, production design) or for Kubrick and writer Arthur C. Clarke, though Douglas Rain, as the voice of HAL 9000, gives one of the best performances in any film. How would you like to have been beaten out by a sentient computer? No, instead, the 1969 Academy Award nominees for Best Actor were Cliff Robertson in CHARLY, Alan Arkin in THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER, Alan Bates in THE FIXER, Ron Moody in OLIVER!, and Peter O’Toole in THE LION IN WINTER … with the prize to Robertson. Who remembers their performances? Honestly … we all remember HAL 9000, “Look Dave, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”

Nearly all the kudos for A CLOCKWORK ORANGE were technical or for the director, like before, but Malcolm McDowell earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as larger-than-life Alex DeLarge.

BARRY LYNDON won 1976 Academy Awards for best production design, best costume design, best cinematography, and best original score.

Jack Nicholson won Academy Awards for Best Actor in 1976 (ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST) and 1998 (AS GOOD AS IT GETS) and for Best Supporting Actor in 1984 (TERMS OF ENDEARMENT), but he got no love for THE SHINING though his flamboyant performances before and after Kubrick received nominations. I mean, for example, is Nicholson’s performance in THE SHINING all that different from his one in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST?

EYES WIDE SHUT received no Academy Award nominations, just like THE SHINING before it, although Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman do some of their best work.

Back to FULL METAL JACKET.

Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford received the film’s lone Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, while both Ermey and D’Onofrio were both separately nominated for Best Supporting Actor, Ermey by the Golden Globes and D’Onofrio by the Boston Society of Film Critics.

I doubt there were better performances from any films released in 1987.

Erney and D’Onofrio bring their characters Gunnery Sergeant Hartman and Private Leonard “Gomer Pyle” Lawrence to such life that they stay with us for the rest of the movie after their unfortunate, tragic demise at the end of the Parris Island sequence. Their characters stay with us forever, in fact, and I venture to say that’s a definition of a great performance.

If somebody mentions Gomer Pyle, for example, I think first of FULL METAL JACKET and not Jim Nabors of “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” Please consider that, for a second.

D’Onofrio gained 70 pounds for the role of the overweight Gomer Pyle, who finds that he’s only got one true skill in basic training. Those 70 pounds surpassed what Robert DeNiro did for RAGING BULL, and that performance earned an Academy Award.

Ermey served as a U.S. Marine drill instructor during the Vietnam War and this real experience informed his performance as Hartman.

Kubrick allowed Ermey to ad lib his dialogue, something that does not jibe with Kubrick’s reputed uncompromising perfectionism. In fact, Google “Kubrick perfectionist” and see results like a Telegraph article titled “The relentless, ridiculous perfectionism of Stanley Kubrick.”

I don’t know, Kubrick earned his reputation for relentless perfectionism, of course, but what about Sellers in DR. STRANGELOVE or, for that matter, George C. Scott’s War Room stumble in that same film? Or McDowell’s “Singin’ in the Rain” number in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE? Or Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny” in THE SHINING? Ad libs, ad libs, ad libs.

Kubrick and his films are complex, contradictory, and controversial, and that’s part of why they stand the test of time.