Full Metal Jacket

1987
R
1h 56m

IMDb RATING

8.2/10

810K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

676

Play trailer1:29

2 Videos

99+ Photos

Period Drama Drama War

A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

8.2/10

810K

YOUR RATING

POPULARITY

676

See production info at IMDbPro

Top rated movie #109

Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 8 wins & 15 nominations total

Trivia
In the first part of the movie, in the sequences inside the barracks during the drill, a special lens was designed to keep every single Recruit in focus. Director Stanley Kubrick intended that no one was special and they all had the same treatment.

Goofs
On several occasions, the word "repeat" is used while speaking on the radio. In the Marine Corps, the use of the word "repeat" on the radio is reserved solely for talking to artillery units to request a repeat of the last fire mission. The term used would be: "say again your last" or "I say again."

Quotes
[first lines]
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be "Sir". Do you maggots understand that?
Recruits: [In unison in a normal speaking tone] Sir, yes Sir.
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Bullshit, I can't hear you. Sound off like you got a pair!
Recruits: [In unison, much louder] SIR, YES SIR!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: If you ladies leave my island, if you survive recruit training, you will be a weapon. You will be a minister of death praying for war. But until that day, you are pukes. You are the lowest form of life on Earth. You are not even human fucking beings. You are nothing but unorganized grab-asstic pieces of amphibian shit! Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair. There is no racial bigotry here. I do not look down on niggers, kikes, wops or greasers. Here you are all equally worthless. And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps. Do you maggots understand that?

Crazy credits
End credits list a song performed by Sam the Sham and The Pharaohs, misspelling the last word as "Pharoahs." This has not been corrected on any home video version of the movie.

Alternate versions
Originally the song Paint it Black played at a higher speed and higher pitch during the end credits but starting with the 2001 DVD re-release, whenever the movie was remixed to 5.1 (from mono) it was "corrected" to where it plays at the regular speed and pitch instead.

Connections
Edited into EBN: Commercial Entertainment Product (1992)

Soundtracks
Hello Vietnam
Written by Tom T. Hall
Performed by Johnny Wright
Courtesy of MCA Records

User reviews1K

Review

Featured review

8/10

The movies finally got Parris Island right

Though I've read only a couple of dozen of the nearly 500 comments on this film, I didn't see any from ex-Marines who'd had the Parris Island experience. I went through PI in 1957. The time period in the picture would have been about 1967, since the in-country sequence includes the '68 Tet Offensive. Little had changed in those 10 years except the switch from M1s to M16s.

For the most part Kubrick got Parris Island right on the money. And why shouldn't he have, since his screen DI, Lee Ermey was in fact a real DI before he started acting (he played another DI in "The Boys of Company C," an earlier and lesser Vietnam flick)? He had a built- in technical adviser. The screams and insults and profanity and physical punishment were all part of the DIs armamentarium. When you're facing up to 75 young strangers you need to immediately establish absolute authority and hang on to it for 13 weeks. Furthermore, you want to break the breakable as soon as you can. My platoon had its Private Pyles and though none ended up as he does in "Full Metal Jacket," I remember that they simply disappeared from our ranks, never to be heard from again. Nothing Ermey as Sgt. Hartman does is exaggerated.

Kubrick, however, does exaggerate. Speaking of Pyle's ending, it's almost impossible for me to imagine that a recruit could manage to sneak a clip of live rounds away from the rifle range. Every shooter at the range has his own rifle coach, and every single round is very carefully accounted for. Kubrick started the killing one scene too early.

I've read that DIs nowadays are forbidden to use the time-honored f-word, and are not allowed to lay hands on recruits. I don't know if that's good or bad for training (I had my face slapped hard my first day of boot camp and that was just for openers), but then all of us old-timers like to brag about how tough it useta be!

A final note: It's interesting to compare "Full Metal Jacket" to another attempt at a portrayal of Parris Island, Jack Webb's "The DI," made around '55 or '56. Webb tries for authenticity, but as I was to learn a year or so later, his PI was a boy scout camp.