Full Metal Jacket\

Review of Full Metal Jacket: Love in the heart of London

The film Full Metal Jacket (1987) has a completely different perspective than all the films about the war. While most choose tropical jungle as the center of the story, Full Metal Jacket takes fierce fighting straight in Fmovies.

In the spring of 1980, the talented director Stanley Kubrick contacted Michael Herr - the author of the Vietnam War, Dispatches - to discuss the making of a film about the genocide of the Jewish people during Hitler's time. . But after reading Herr's Dispatches, Kubrick decided to move on to make a war movie. He expressed his intention to Herr, then searched for a suitable story to adapt.

Incidentally in 1982, while reading the Virginia Kirkus Review, Kubrick discovered Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers - a former war correspondent officer, content as a journal about purity and ruin. destruction as well as nakedness and death ... Kubrick was drawn into the lines of the book "poignant poignant and powerful". Kubrick sent Herr and both of them said "It's a unique book, really great" ... then they decided The Short-Timers will be the foundation for the war movie that Kubrick wants to make.

In 1983, Kubrick began to spend most of his time researching the movie Full Metal Jacket. He watched documentary videos, read articles and documents about Vietnam stored as microfilm in the Library of Congress, and searched hundreds of photos of the time. In 1985, Kubrick contacted the author of The Short-Timers novel Gustav Hasford to invite the screenplay with him and Michael Herr.

Michael Herr said Kubrick didn't intend to make an anti-war film, "He wanted to show what the multitude of wars was like!". Concerned that the title of The Short-Timers book would be misinterpreted by the audience as referring to people who were only used to working half a day, Kubrick changed the film's name to Full Metal Jacket - a reference to a bullet with a lethal damage. Large US marines.

The movie Full Metal Jacket has two distinct parts
Part I followed a group of recruits joining the US Marines training camp. This seemingly dry part makes the audience really terrified by the harsh training methods and advocates brainwashing young bamboo shoots to become cruel cold people with horrifying criteria: Born to kill !

Part II, following the rookie group - now an elite marines - into the Vietnam battlefield. And they became breathtaking witnesses of a memorable historical experience: the Tet Offensive and the 1968 Tet Offensive - An event that broke the arrogant drawing of the true strength of the US military in South Vietnam battlefield.

Through Warner Bros Film Studio, Kubrick announced the casting of actors across the US and Canada. Because he has long been averse to America and lives only in the UK, this fastidious director only cast actors on video. A total of 3,000 video tapes were sent to the casting department. These people carefully watched and screened, leaving 800 tapes for Kubrick to personally review.

Former US Marine trainer, R. Lee Ermey, was originally hired as a military professional advisor for Full Metal Jacket. Ermey once shyly asked Kubrick to audition for the role of commander of the marines training camp, sergeant "dark" Hartman - an important role of the film. However, Kubrick had previously seen Ermey play the role of Sgt.Loyce in The Boys in Company C (another film about the Vietnam War) so he thought that Ermey was not rude enough to play that character.

In response, Ermey silently made a video of him improvising in an abusive voice of a group of marines, while people outside the camera threw orange and tennis balls at him. Ermey, though distracted, still poured out a series of insults in one go for 15 minutes without stumbling!

After watching the video, Kubrick was "stunned" and immediately gave the role to Ermey, because he realized that "God gave Ermey to him to play this role." Ermey's experience as a real-life coach in the war proved invaluable, and he nurtured that practice to the point where, once in a while, Ermey shouted orders Kubrick off the camera to stand up when Kubrick spoke to him. , and Kubrick obeyed his instincts, standing still before he realized what had happened in Full Metal Jacket.

Kubrick estimates that Ermey spits 150 pages full of insults, many insults are spontaneously poured in place - a rarity for Kubrick's finality. According to Kubrick's estimation, this former trainer taught himself and created 50% of his lines. Best of all, Ermey usually only needs two or three shots for a scene - another rare thing for a Kubrick movie! Only a brief appearance, but Ermey's role made the film's most memorable impression.

Most of the main actors in the movie Full Metal Jacket are "newcomers" in the film, but they leave an impression: Mathew Modine as Private Joke and especially Vincent D'Onofrio as poor Pyle Private . Kubrick once invited Bruce Willis to play a role (at this time he was not famous), but Willis eventually turned down this opportunity because he was about to start filming the first 6 episodes of the TV series Moonlighting.

Matthew Modine later described the shooting process as extremely difficult: He had to shave his head once a week, while Ermey screamed at him for ten hours a day during the filming of the training camp scenes. on Parris Island.

It is strange that a perfectionist like Kubrick decided to film the whole film in England. But the most impressive thing is the scene of Hue city ruined because bombs have been recreated like the real thing. Kubrick relied on photographs of Hue city taken in 1968 and discovered an area owned by the British Gas company, Beckton - an ancient gas producing town in the abandoned 1930s on the Thames - almost like the scene in the photo ...

To achieve maximum efficiency, Kubrick's art design artists demolished, and exploded all or part of the houses. They also used a concrete demolition sphere to breach the walls and ignite some buildings over a period of two months.

Kubrick made a plastic model of a forest that was brought from California by plane