Word: kubrick
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...Stanley Kubrick' s first film in seven years, Full Metal Jacket, is a Viet Nam horror show with a dynamite first act and a fizzle finale...
...this first half of the film is occasionally confused, uncertain whether to portray Pyle as a comic figure or as a troubled man. His sudden psychopathy is barely convincing, because Pyle's getting his act together would have gotten the drill sergeant off his back. Kubrick seems slightly off the mark in portraying the tyrannical nature of the drill sargeant. The sergeant at times seems patriotic to the point of ridicule--tough so he can make his men great in the name of his country--but when he invokes the ghost of Lee Harvey Oswald as a great marine worthy...
...genius of Kubrick's work peaks in the second half of the film, as the new Marines are placed into several different platoons in Vietnam, just in time for the surprise Tet Offensive...
...Kubrick keeps the audience distanced from the action, inflicting on them the confusion that the soldiers themselves sense as he weaves them in and out of combat situation. But the confusion of the physical environment has entered the soldiers' souls, reflected best by one young recruit nicknamed Joker, who wears a peace symbol on his jacket while letters on his helmet boldly declare "Born to Kill...
...each character, and finally the audience, must cope with not only a desire for peace, but a lust for killing. What matters to Kubrick is the celebration of life, the soldiers' marvelling at their ability to kill or be killed...