Born to Kill

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Recommended: Full metal jacket summary

The film Full Metal Jacket (1987) is a film about the Vietnam War. The movie shows the war from a Marines’ perspective. The protagonist is nick-named Joker. He becomes an enlisted reporter. The movie begins at basic training on Parris Island, South Carolina and ends in the middle of the conflict in Vietnam. The depiction of Boot camp, The Tet Offensive, and War correspondents solidifies Full Metal Jacket as an honest representation of the soldier’s entire experience during Vietnam.

Boot camp is accurately depicted in Full Metal Jacket. Parris Island is one of the two Marine training facilities. The two complexes are Parris Island, South Carolina and San Diego, California. In March of 1966 Parris Island had 10,979 recruits. The harsh treatment of enlisted personnel shown in the film parallels the treatment of some Drill Instructors. The actor who played the Drill Instructor, R. Lee Ermy, was a marine drill sergeant before he became an actor. He was quoted as saying “If I thought he was making an anti war movie I would have had no part in it.” He was, of course, speaking of Stanley Kubrick’s ground breaking picture which is widely perceived as an anti war demonstration. Treatment by drill sergeants often led to psychotic breaks. The verbal and physical abuse Drill Sergeants gave to new recruits has lead to later problems such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The thirteen week training program enlistees are put through is strenuous and sometimes fatal. Boot Camp in Full Metal Jacket is one of the most accurate aspects. (Pike, http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/mcrd-parris-island.)

The realities of the Tet Offensive were offered in the film. Tet is a major holiday in Vietnam and treaties were signed...

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...e reporters, like the protagonist tried to stay true and went against their commanding officers. This force of reporters made up of civilians and enlisted men saw frontline combat like the grunts in the war but were still looked down upon. These people were forced to shoot and kill men as depicted in the scene at the barracks. During the War correspondents were put on long patrols and were up “all night setting up ambushes”

(https://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2009fall/warcorrespondents)

Full Metal Jacket exemplifies a brutally honest illustration of the horrible events of the Vietnam War. The movie is not anti war but makes one contemplate the morality of war. Kubrick makes the actions in the movie believable because of the documentary style filming and dialogue. The film is an emotion torrent scene through the eyes of an enlightened man.

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