Full Metal Jacket (1987)

[**** stars / *****] 

Private Joker/Private J.T. Davis: 

Are those live rounds?

Leonard Lawrence/Pvt. Gomer Pyle: 

Seven-six-two millimeter, full metal jacket.

Full Metal Jacket (1987), before stumbling into the hell-infested battlefields of Vietnam, begins with a relentless Marine Corps training regime depiction that tells more about what war does to ordinary, simple, vulnerable young men, than the movie's latter half.

The indoctrination, humiliation, loss of self-esteem, and the breaking down of a sane mind brings home what was terribly wrong with sending US soldiers to Vietnam. The sheer madness of it all.  

Full Metal Jacket story 
Private Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence (Vincent D'Onofrio) stands for the end of innocence and free will. Leonard is weak-minded and faces the savage hammer-like authority of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (Lee Ermey) at the Marine Corps training center.

Private/Sergeant J. T. "Joker" Davis (Matthew Modine) tries to help Leonard, but is soon forced to abandon him, as Hartman starts punishing the entire batch for Leonard's mistakes.

This initial 40-minute havoc is cinema at its tense, harrowing best. The rest of the movie doesn't pale in comparison to the first part, but you never forget Leonard, his demented face hovering like a ghost over the nightmarish barbarism and cruelty of war.   

    
Full Metal Jacket review 
Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece is an uncomfortable but gritty watch, a stand-out war movie on the futility and stupidity of killing another human being.

(A full metal jacket is a kind of bullet used by the military. The bullet has a soft center, usually lead, and is encased by a harder metal.)