Full Metal Jacket

"In Vietnam, the wind doesn't blow. It sucks."

1987 1h 57m EN

🙌

8.1

BANGER

★8.1TMDB · 11,809

DramaWar

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

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

“In Vietnam, the wind doesn't blow. It sucks.”

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Cast

Matthew Modine
Pvt. Joker
Adam Baldwin
Animal Mother
Vincent D'Onofrio
Pvt. Pyle
R. Lee Ermey
Gny. Sgt. Hartman
Dorian Harewood
Eightball
Kevyn Major Howard
Rafterman
Arliss Howard
Pvt. Cowboy
Ed O'Ross
Lt. Touchdown

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Michael Herr, Stanley Kubrick, Gustav Hasford
Languages: English, Vietnamese
Countries: United Kingdom, United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

ERA

Did you know

39 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Vietnamese.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

WORLD

Did you know

International production across 2 countries: United Kingdom, United States of America.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Stanley Kubrick, shot by Douglas Milsome. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Vivian Kubrick. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Martin Hunter shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Matthew Modine and Adam Baldwin and Vincent D'Onofrio carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "In Vietnam, the wind doesn't blow. It sucks.".

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Stanley Kubrick directs. Douglas Milsome behind the camera. Vivian Kubrick scores. Martin Hunter cuts. Profitable at the box office. Produced in United Kingdom, United States of America. Dialogue in English, Vietnamese.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

139 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
2Dialogue crosses 2 languages: English, Vietnamese.
3International production across 2 countries: United Kingdom, United States of America.
4Directed by Stanley Kubrick, shot by Douglas Milsome. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Vivian Kubrick. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor Martin Hunter shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Matthew Modine and Adam Baldwin and Vincent D'Onofrio carry the top of the cast.
8Marketing tagline: "In Vietnam, the wind doesn't blow. It sucks.".
9IMDB entry: tt0093058 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
1011,809 TMDB user ratings logged — serious cultural footprint.
11Classified under 36 themes, including "rescue", "sniper", "vietnam war", "suicide".

The technical file

Cinematography: Douglas Milsome
Original score: Vivian Kubrick
Editing: Martin Hunter
Production design: Anton Furst
Costume design: Keith Denny
Makeup / hair: Jennifer Boost
Runtime: 117 min · 1h 57m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $30,000,000
Box office: $46,357,676
Return: 155% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): R
IMDB: Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Awards

David di Donatello for Best Producer
National Board of Review: Top Ten Films
Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor
Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Director

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

Stanley Kubrick

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Community reviews

What people are saying

Ian Beale2017-02-15
★ 6/10
The second half is better than the first half. A film of two halves. The first half of the fiim focuses on the training of raw recruits and features shenanigans we have seen countless times before - think Stripes and Police Academy. The persecution of the fat guy - a scenario we had already witnessed in Stripes and Police Academy ( "I could show a movie on your butt, fatso!"- Lt Harris, Police Academy) is here played out to maximum effect. The fat guy who freezes atop a climbing frame is the central plot here with Matthew Modine's character playing second fiddle to all of the Leslie Barbara stuff. The second half of the movie at least gives us something we were not expecting when a sniper's identity is revealed. - Ian Beale
CRCulver2018-07-31
★ 9/10
Released in 1986, Full Metal Jacket is Stanley Kubrick's film about Vietnam, adapted from a novel by the reclusive and bitter Vietnam veteran Gustav Harford, and then further expanded by acclaimed Vietnam journalist Michael Herr. The film breaks down neatly into two very different parts, though both are seen through the eyes of young United States marine J. T. "Joker" Davis (Matthew Modine). In the first act, Davis makes his way through Marine basic training with a motley group of other recruits under the hellish command of gunnery sergeant Hartmann (R. Lee Ermey). Joker watches as Hartmann bullies an overweight and dim-witted recruit cruelly nicknamed Gomer Pyle (Vincent D'Onofrio), until Pyle explodes into murderous revenge. In the second act, now set in Vietnam where Joker is doing a tour of duty as a military journalist, the protagonist and his fellow Marines find themselves on the front line during the Tet Offensive and Joker witnesses firsthand the savagery of war. Few films consist of such drastically opposed parts that differ in setting and tone and don’t have any overlapping characters besides the protagonist (and one minor character from the boot camp scenes). Full Metal Jacket has often disappointed viewers because the first half is so thrilling that it proves a hard act to follow. That's all down to R. Lee Ermey, who actually was a drill instructor during Vietnam and initially served only as a technical consultant before Kubrick decided to let him play the role and improvise. Ermey acts with a white-hot intensity, realism, and brilliantly worded insults and obscenities that no screenwriter could ever have come up with. As a young man, I too felt that the film was a letdown once it moved past the witty quips and goofy camaraderie of the boot camp scenes. With time, however, my appreciation for the film as a whole has only grown. The two-part structure now seems to be a strong yin-yang structure: the first act is a vision of order, while the second is all chaos. Furthermore, the second half is a moving statement of how war is often senseless. Joker and his squad, while on patrol for an enemy they cannot even identify and whose ideology or culture they know hardly anything of, begin to be targeted by a sniper. Several men perish before the sniper is found and neutralized, and all that death is pointless: it doesn't contribute in any way to victory for either side. The brutality of World War I trench warfare, where dozens of men could perish for merely a foot of conquered ground, is shown to have persisted through the American quagmire in Southeast Asia. That said, the film does have its flaws. One is the unrealistic depiction of the Vietnamese landscape. Kubrick had a great fear or dislike of foreign travel, and he insisted on shooting the whole film in East London. Having merely a few palm trees shipped in is a poor replacement for a real Southeast Asian shooting location with its humidity and insects, and in the scene that is meant to show a lively Vietnamese town square Kubrick obviously had the same few cars driving around in circles. It's strange how a director who was generally so perfectionist, could be so careless about locales (this only got worse with his next and last film, Eyes Wide Shut, with its inauthentic stage set New York City). There are also some anachronisms that this director and his technical advisors should have noticed. Still, even a flawed Kubrick film is classic cinema.
John Chard2020-10-06
★ 7/10
The Marine's don't want robots - they want killers. This is the journey undertaken by Private "Joker" J.T. Davis, from brutal training camp to Vietnam itself. As most people know by now, Full Metal Jacket is divided very much into two different halves, halves that to me show the best and worst of the talented director, Stanley Kubrick. For the first part we are subjected to the training regime inflicted on wet behind the ears boys, boys soon to become Marines out in the harshness of the Vietnam War. This is real dehumanising stuff, frighteningly essayed by the brilliance of drill instructor R Lee Ermey's performance. We know, see and feel that the boys are primed to be killing machines, unemotional killing machines at that, with Kubrick astutely weaving the brutality of camp into the moral quandary that was the war itself. One particular recruit, Private Gomer (a heartfelt and unnervingly great Vincent D'Onofrio) is the film, and Gustav Hasford's (writer of the novel and co screenwriter here) point of reference in this incredible first half. It's with this strand that "Jacket" burns itself into the soul of the viewer, to hopefully set us up for what will be Private "Joker's" (Matthew Modine) preparation for the Vietnam conflict. Then it's that second half... Where do we go from here? We already know that "Joker" and his mentally brutalised colleagues have been stripped of their basic humanity. Soldiers primed to kill, it's harsh, but true. But Kubrick has already chilled our blood and bludgeoned us repeatedly courtesy of the "Boot Camp" set up. Modine's (who isn't strong enough to carry the picture) "Joker" is now the film's axis, a clever, most definitely articulate character, who is thrust into the murky and muddled battle of the Tet Offensive, yeah and so? All it amounts to is a prolonged series of rationale and philosophical musings on the false war. Kubrick even shifting to safe mode with a clumsy narration segment spouted by "Joker". Full Metal Jacket is a truly fine film, but it's not the brilliant one it really should have been. If one can take the time to venture deeper with the second half, then it doesn't deliver on the already made point promise of the first part. Technically it's flawless, incredibly designed, with Douglas Milsome's cinematography stunningly effective. But I'll maintain to my final day that Full Metal Jacket finished up as being bloody and pretty instead of being a poignant and horrifying masterpiece. 7/10