Blog 5 CT

The film Full Metal Jacket by Stanley Kubrick depicts the journey through the Vietnam War of one marine. Throughout the movie we see the intensity the soldiers go through for training and combat. The movie contains three parts that include the basic training the soldiers receive before war, Joker becoming a sergeant in Vietnam with the Stars and Stripes, and finally serving on Cowboys Platoon until he gets shot.

During basic training the soldiers are interrogated until they are no longer scared and want to be fighting machines. Hartman is tough on his guys so they will be ready for Vietnam and real combat. On one man he is particularly tough on and it eventually gets to Pyle’s head. We get to the scene where he is singing the Mickey Mouse song and he eventually shoots Hartmann in the chest and kills him, and then proceeds to kill himself. This shows how much the marines have to go through before even getting there. Through the training we realize that these men are just young men. They will be ready for anything that comes to them.

The second part to the movie shows Joker in Vietnam. We see that he has few worries writing for the military journalism. At the same time we also see that his friend’s camera gets stolen while they are talking to the prostitute. They are forced to make the U.S. believe that everything is going well in the U.S. Private Joker, who hasn’t even been involved in combat, is writing pro war stories.

The final scene shows the reality of war for Private Joker when he finally goes into combat in Vietnam. Throughout the movie we first see Private Joker show up to the training camp looking innocent and joking around but the final scene shows him shooting a Vietnamese sniper woman and we realize that just like the others he has transformed into a fighting machine just like Hartmann wanted. We have now seen the brutality of war and how is has affected them and the last scene is the young boys marching off to the Mickey Mouse song and it just reminds us how young they are. They truly are not men like they have forced to train as, they are still young boys fighting to stay alive.