Full Metal Jacket
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Full Metal Jacket | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster. |
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| Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Produced by | Stanley Kubrick Jan Harlan |
| Written by | Novel: Gustav Hasford Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick Michael Herr Gustav Hasford |
| Starring | Matthew Modine Adam Baldwin Vincent D'Onofrio R. Lee Ermey |
| Music by | Vivian Kubrick |
| Cinematography | Douglas Milsome |
| Editing by | Martin Hunter |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 26, 1987 |
| Running time | 116 minutes |
| Country | United States United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $17,000,000 (estimated) |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Full Metal Jacket (1987) is an Academy Award-nominated[1] Stanley Kubrick war film based on the novel The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford. The title refers to the type of ammunition used by infantry riflemen. The film portrays the urban Vietnam War fought by the U.S. Marines. In 2005, Full Metal Jacket was placed #5 in Channel 4's The 100 Greatest War Films poll.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
A group of new recruits in the United States Marine Corps has just arrived at Parris Island for indoctrination and basic training. Their drill instructor is Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey), who wastes no time in starting the process of breaking the men down. The Vietnam War is in full swing, and his job is to produce trained killers who will not hesitate when the decisive moment arrives. The film's first section focuses on the physical and psychological treatment of recruit Leonard Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio), whom Hartman nicknames "Gomer Pyle."
Hartman immediately pegs Pyle as a misfit. He is socially awkward, overweight and out of shape. He has trouble coping with the physical rigors of recruit training and does not adhere well to orders and procedures. Whether this is from carelessness, anxiety, or lack of intelligence is never made clear but it seems to be more of anxiety. His deficiencies get the constant attention of Hartman, who punishes him as a lesson to the others. Hartman ultimately appoints the protagonist "Joker" (Matthew Modine) as Pyle's squad leader and mentor, stressing that Joker will set Pyle straight. Although Pyle eventually straightens up and becomes a more disciplined recruit on some fronts, during an inspection, Hartman discovers a contraband jelly doughnut in Pyle's foot locker. A new rule is immediately put into effect: every time Pyle makes a mistake, Hartman will punish everyone else in the platoon and force the humiliated Pyle to watch. Shortly afterward, the other recruits gang up on Pyle during the night and give him a blanket party. Joker, the last one to beat Pyle, covers his ears to block out the latter's sobbing once he is back in his bunk.
The next morning, Joker realizes that Pyle has become sullen and withdrawn. Pyle begins to detach himself from the platoon as well as the rest of reality. His expert marksmanship impresses Hartman, but Joker becomes worried upon watching Pyle converse with his rifle, which he has named "Charlene." On completing their training, everyone in 3092 platoon is assigned a Military Occupational Specialty, the most common being 0300-Infantry (one notable exception is Joker who is assigned to 4212-Basic Military Journalism). On the platoon's last night on Parris Island, Joker is assigned firewatch (guard) duty, during which he discovers Pyle in the head (toilet) loading his rifle with live ammunition. Frightened, Joker attempts to calm Pyle as he loses his grip on reality and begins shouting and executing drill commands. The noise awakens Hartman, who rushes into the head and orders Pyle put down the rifle. Instead, Pyle shoots Hartman dead, then sits on the toilet and kills himself as a stunned Joker looks on.
The second part of the film opens in Vietnam in January 1968. Joker is a Sergeant and a Marine Combat Correspondent with Stars and Stripes. He has been assigned to a Marine public affairs unit with his new partner "Rafterman" (Kevyn Major Howard), a combat photographer. One day while reading reports and pitching article ideas, Joker tells his superior, Lt. Lockhart (John Terry), of a rumor that the Communists might launch a large attack during the Tet Holiday. Lockhart is dismissive of Joker's claims. However, soon thereafter, the Tet Offensive begins and the Marine base is attacked. During the offensive, Joker fights his first battle when the North Vietnamese Army attempts to overrun the base.
The next day, the PA staff learn about the gravity of the situation from Lockhart. Joker is ordered to Phu Bai, a Marine forward operating base near the ancient Vietnamese city of Huế, to cover the combat taking place in this region. Rafterman tags along looking for some "trigger time." En route to their new assignment, Joker and Rafterman meet a crazed door gunner (Tim Colceri) on an H-34 Choctaw who shoots every Vietnamese person he sees on the ground, rationalizing his actions by assuming they are all Vietcong.
When Joker lands outside Huế, he meets Lt. Walter J. Schinowsky, aka "Touchdown" (Ed O'Ross), who directs Joker to a massacre of civilians by the North Vietnamese Army. Afterwards, Joker links up with "Cowboy" (Arliss Howard), his friend from boot camp, who is second in command of the Lusthog Squad. It is here Joker meets Lusthog squad's M-60 machine gunner, a nihilistic Marine nicknamed Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin). Joker then accompanies Cowboy's squad during the Battle of Huế. A vicious battle breaks out, initially resulting in the death of Cowboy's platoon leader, which leaves a Marine nicknamed Crazy Earl (Kieron Jecchinis) as the new squad leader. Earl leads the Lusthog Squad through a ruined section of the city.
The squad is called up for patrol again, this time north of the Perfume River, which divides the city of Huế, where enemy forces are believed to be hiding. Crazy Earl comes across a stuffed rabbit and picks it up. The toy is a booby trap, and the ensuing blast kills Earl and leaves Cowboy the reluctant squad leader. The squad becomes lost in the ruined city, and a sniper wounds two of their comrades, Doc Jay (Jon Stafford) and Eightball (Dorian Harewood), with the intention of drawing more of them in. As the squad moves up to try to locate the hidden position, the sniper kills Cowboy too.
With Cowboy dead, Animal Mother assumes command of the remaining Marines. Using smoke to conceal their advance, the squad closes in and enters the building being used by the sniper. Joker finds the sniper, but his rifle jams and the sniper, an adolescent Vietnamese girl, opens fire and pins him behind a column. Rafterman arrives and shoots the sniper, saving Joker. As Joker, Rafterman, Animal Mother, and the remaining Marines gather around the mortally wounded girl, she begins to pray weakly in Vietnamese. After a pause, she begs in English to the Marines, "Shoot me", over and over. Joker and Animal Mother argue over this request, the latter wanting to simply leave her to suffer. Ultimately, Animal Mother allows a mercy killing, but only if the combat-deprived Joker performs it. After a long pause, Joker shoots her. The film concludes with the Marines' rendition of the song Mickey Mouse Club as they march into the night.
[edit] Cast and characters
- Matthew Modine as Private / Sergeant James T. "Joker" Davis, the protagonist-narrator who claims to have joined the Corps to see combat and to be the first one on his block with a confirmed kill. He witnesses Pyle's insanity occur in boot camp, but ostensibly becomes a squared away Marine. He later is an independent-minded combat correspondent accompanying the Lusthog Squad to report combat from the field.
- Adam Baldwin as "Animal Mother": The nihilistic M-60 machine gunner of the Lusthog Squad, Animal Mother is contemptuous of any authority but his own, ruling by intimidation. Animal Mother believes victory should be the only object of war. In The Short Timers, he is a New Yorker who went to war instead of jail.
- Dorian Harewood as "Eightball": The Black man of the Lusthog squad, insensitive about his ethnicity (e.g. 'Put a nigger behind the trigger'), and Animal Mother's pal. The sniper shoots him repeatedly before killing him.
- Kevyn Major Howard as "Rafterman": Rafterman is a combat photographer with the Stars and Stripes office with Joker. He requests permission to accompany Joker into Huế and ultimately saves him by shooting the sniper.
- Arliss Howard as the Texan Private / Sergeant "Cowboy" Evans who goes through boot camp with Joker. He becomes a rifleman, and later encounters Joker in Vietnam, having become a rifle squad leader. In The Short Timers, Joker kills Cowboy, in sacrifice, after being severely wounded by a sniper expecting to trick the squad to rescue so he may shoot them all. In Full Metal Jacket, he quickly dies of a sucking chest wound, while in Joker's arms, surrounded by the remainder of his platoon.
- Ed O'Ross as Lieutenant Walter J. "Touchdown" Schinowski: The platoon leader of the Lusthog squad's platoon, He was a college football player at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. He is killed in an ambush outside of Hue City.
- John Terry as Lieutenant Lockhart: The PIO officer-in-chief and Joker's assignment editor. He has combat-reporting experience, but uses his officer rank to avoid returning, on account of the danger and the bugs, rationalizing that his journalistic duties keep him where he belongs, "In the rear with the gear".
- Kieron Jecchinis as "Crazy Earl": The squad leader, he is forced to assume platoon command when Platoon Leader Lt. Touchdown is killed. A booby-trapped toy kills him. As in the novel he carries a BB gun, which is visible just before he dies.
- Jon Stafford as Doc Jay: A Navy corpsman attached to the Lusthog squad. He is wounded by the sniper while attempting to drag Eightball to safety; a subsequent machine-gun burst finishes them both off.
- Vincent D'Onofrio as Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence: An overweight, clumsy, slow-witted recruit who is the focus of Hartman's attention for being incompetent and fat, making him the platoon scapegoat. After a blanket party from the rest of the platoon for failing almost everything and earning them collective punishments, he turns psychotic and talks to his rifle, "Charlene", yet he becomes the most disciplined Marine. In The Short Timers, Leonard Pratt is a skinny, awkward Alabama boy who shoots Gerheim, then himself, in front of everyone in the bunkhouse section of the barracks. In Full Metal Jacket, he shoots Hartman while in the bathrooms, and then himself in front of Joker. The humiliating nickname, Gomer Pyle originates from a likable, but dim character from the American television program the Andy Griffith Show who eventually enlists in the USMC.
- R. Lee Ermey as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: the stereotypical Parris Island drill instructor who trains his recruits to transform them into Marines. In The Short Timers, the character's name is "Gerheim" and potbellied; he is a Second World War veteran of the Battle of Iwo Jima.
- Tim Colceri as the door-gunner, the Loadmaster and machine gunner of the USMC H-34 Choctaw helicopter transporting Joker and Rafterman to the Tet Offensive front. Inflight, he shoots at civilians, while enthusiastically repeating Get some!, boasting "157 dead Gooks killed". When Joker asks if that includes women and children, he admits it stating, "Sometimes." Joker then asks, "How can you kill women and children?" to which the door-gunner replies jokingly, "Easy, you just don't lead 'em so much!...Ha, ha, ha,...Ain't war hell?!" This scene is adapted from Michael Herr's 1977 book Dispatches.
- Papillon Soo Soo as Da Nang Hooker: A prostitute who approaches Joker and Rafterman at a street corner during the first scene in Vietnam. She is memorable for the sales-pitch phrases: Me love you long time, me sooo horny and Me sucky sucky, in exchange for fifteen dollars.
[edit] Production
Stanley Kubrick contacted Michael Herr, author of the Vietnam War memoir, Dispatches, in Spring of 1980 to discuss working on a film about the Holocaust but eventually discarded that in favor of a film about the Vietnam War.[2] They met in England and the director told him that he wanted to do a war film but he had yet to find a story to adapt.[3] Kubrick discovered Gustav Hasford's novel The Short-Timers while reading the Virginia Kirkus Review[4] and Herr received it in bound galleys and thought that it was a masterpiece.[3] In 1982, Kubrick read the novel twice and afterwards thought that it "was a unique, absolutely wonderful book" and decided, along with Herr,[2] that it would be the basis for his next film.[4] According to the filmmaker, he was drawn to the book's dialogue that was "almost poetic in its carved-out, stark quality."[4] In 1983, he began researching for this film, watching past footage and documentaries, reading Vietnamese newspapers on microfilm from the Library of Congress, and studied hundreds of photographs from the era.[5] Initially, Herr was not interested in revisiting his Vietnam War experiences and Kubrick spent three years persuading him in what the author describes as "a single phone call lasting three years, with interruptions."[2]
[edit] Screenplay
In 1985, Kubrick contacted Hasford to work on the screenplay with him and Herr,[3] often talking to Hasford on the phone three to four times a week for hours at a time.[6] Kubrick had already written a detailed treatment.[3] The two men got together at Kubrick's home every day, breaking down the treatment into scenes. From that, Herr wrote the first draft.[3] The filmmaker was worried that the title of the book would be misread by audiences as referring to people who only did half a day's work and changed it to Full Metal Jacket after discovering the phrase while going through a gun catalogue.[3] After the first draft was completed, Kubrick would phone in his orders and Hasford and Herr would mail in their submissions.[7] Kubrick would read and then edit them with the process starting over. Neither Hasford nor Herr knew how much they contributed to the screenplay and this led to a dispute over the final credits.[7] Hasford remembers, "We were like guys on an assembly line in the car factory. I was putting on one widget and Michael was putting on another widget and Stanley was the only one who knew that this was going to end up being a car."[7] Herr says that the director was not interested in making an anti-war film but that "he wanted to show what war is like."[2]
At some point, Kubrick wanted to meet Hasford in person but Herr advised against this, describing The Short-Timers author as a "scary man."[2] Kubrick insisted and they all met at Kubrick's house in England for dinner. It did not go well and Hasford was subsequently shut out of the production.[2]
[edit] Casting
Through Warner Brothers, Kubrick advertised a national search in the United States.[3] The director used video tape to audition actors. He received over 3,000 video tapes.[3] His staff screened all of the tapes and eliminated the unacceptable ones. This left 800 tapes for Kubrick to personally review.[3]
Former U.S. Marine Drill Instructor R. Lee Ermey was originally hired as a technical adviser and asked Kubrick if he could audition for the role of Hartman but the director told him that he wasn't vicious enough to play the character.[3] Ermey made a videotape of himself improvising insulting dialogue while being pelted with oranges and tennis balls, which he did with a group of British soldiers who auditioned for the film with the scene where the recruits first meet Hartman. Ermey, in spite of the distractions, rattled off an unbroken string of insults for 15 minutes, and did he not flinch, duck, or repeat himself while being hit with the oranges or tennis balls.[3] Upon viewing it Kubrick gave him the role, realizing that Ermey "was a genius for this part,"[5] and estimates that Ermey came up with 150 pages of insults, much of it being improvised on the spot.[8] According to the director, 50% of Ermey's dialogue, the insults, were written by the former drill instructor.[8]
[edit] Locations
The film was photographed in England, in Cambridgeshire, on the Norfolk Broads and Beckton, in Newham, East London. A former RAF and then British Army base, Bassingbourn Barracks, doubled as the Parris Island Marine boot camp.[5] The disused Beckton Gasworks portrayed the ruined city of Huế. Kubrick worked from still photographs of Huế taken in 1968 and found an area owned by British Gas that closely resembled it and was scheduled to be demolished.[8] To achieve this look, Kubrick had buildings blown up and the film's art director used a wrecking ball to knock specific holes in certain buildings over the course of two months.[8] Originally, Kubrick had a plastic replica jungle flown in from California but once he looked at it was reported to have said, "I don't like it. Get rid of it."[9] The open country is Cliffe marshes, also on the Thames, with 200 imported Spanish palm trees[4] and 100,000 plastic tropical plants from Hong Kong.[8]
[edit] Principal photography
Kubrick acquired four M41 tanks from a Belgian army colonel who was a fan, historically correct Sikorsky H-34 Choctaw helicopters which were actually Westland Wessex and painted Marine green, and he obtained a selection of rifles, M79 grenade launchers and M60 machine guns from a licensed weapons dealer.[5]
According to Matthew Modine, it was a tough shoot as he had to have his head shaved once a week and was yelled at by Ermey for ten hours a day while shooting the Parris Island scenes.[10]
At one point during filming, Ermey had a car accident and broke all of his ribs on one side and was out for four and half months.[8] Cowboy's death scene shows a building in the background that resembles the famous alien monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick said the resemblance is an "extraordinary accident."[8]
During filming, Hasford contemplated legal action over the writing credit. Originally, Hasford was supposed to receive an "additional dialogue" credit but he wanted full credit.[7] The writer took two friends and snuck onto the set dressed as extras only to be mistaken by a crew member for Herr.[6]
[edit] Music
A score for the film was written by "Abigail Mead" (an alias for Kubrick's daughter Vivian). According to an interview which appeared in the January 1988 issue of Keyboard Magazine, the film was scored mostly with a Fairlight CMI synthesizer (the then-current Series III edition), and the Synclavier.
For the period music, Kubrick went through Billboard's list of Top 100 Hits for each year from 1962-1968 and tried many songs but "sometimes the dynamic range of the music was too great, and we couldn't work in dialogue."[8] The music included in the film is as follows:
- Hello Vietnam - Performed by Johnnie Wright
- These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Performed by Nancy Sinatra
- Wooly Bully - Performed by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs
- Surfin' Bird - Performed by The Trashmen
- The Marines Hymn - Performed by The Goldman Band
- Chapel of Love - Performed by The Dixie Cups
- Mickey Mouse Club Television Theme
- Paint It, Black - Performed by The Rolling Stones
The sequence that includes "Surfin Bird" was included in UGO's Top 11 Uses of Classic Rock in Cinema
[edit] References
- ^ Full Metal Jacket at the Internet Movie Database. Accessed on February 29, 2008.
- ^ a b c d e f CVulliamy, Ed. "It Ain't Over Till It's Over", The Observer, July 16, 2000. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k LoBrutto, Vincent. "Stanley Kubrick", Donald I. Fine Books, 1997.
- ^ a b c d Clines, Francis X. "Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam", New York Times, June 21, 1987. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.
- ^ a b c d Rose, Lloyd. "Stanley Kubrick, At a Distance", Washington Post, June 28, 1987. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.
- ^ a b Lewis, Grover. "The Several Battles of Gustav Hasford", Los Angeles Times Magazine, June 28, 1987. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.
- ^ a b c d Carlton, Bob. "Alabama Native wrote the book on Vietnam Film", Birmingham News, 1987. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Cahill, Tim. "The Rolling Stone Interview", Rolling Stone, 1987. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.
- ^ Watson, Ian. "Plumbing Stanley Kubrick", Playboy, 2000. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.
- ^ Linfield, Susan. "The Gospel According to Matthew", American Film, October 1987. Retrieved on 2007-10-11.
[edit] External links
- Full Metal Jacket at the Internet Movie Database
- Full Metal Jacket script at the Internet Movie Script Database
- Full Metal Jacket at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Short-Timers by Gustav Hasford - original text
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