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Full Metal Jacket (HD DVD)
Warner Bros. // R // May 16, 2006 // Region 0
List Price: $28.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Son, all I've ever asked of my Marines is for them to obey my orders as they would the word of God. We are here to help the Vietnamese because inside every gook, there is an American trying to get out. It's a hardball world, son. We've got to try to keep our heads until this peace craze blows over."
"Aye aye, sir."
Stanley Kubrick's penultimate, schizophrenic film Full Metal Jacket is a deromanticization of war. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, its first forty-five minutes are spent at a Marine boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina. R. Lee Ermey stars in a career-defining role as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, a legendarily profane drill instructor who spends the next eight weeks shaping a batch of meek maggots into killers. Some adapt more quickly than others, especially Joker (Matthew Modine). More problematic is the dumpy, perpetually smirking Gomer Pyle, played to perfection by Vincent D'Onofrio, an actor who can convey more with one facial expression than most can with a twelve minute monologue. Hartman mocks and demeans his charges to steel them in preparation for the cruelty of war, but Gomer Pyle takes the brunt of his torment. The drill instructor's sadistic tactics eventually seem to pay off as the slothful, overweight recruit starts to resemble an actual Marine, but the trade-off is the loss of his humanity, and a confrontation between this broken man and his tormentor is inevitable.
Kubrick then shifts the setting to Vietnam just prior to the Tet Offensive. Joker is a correspondant for "Stars and Stripes", a wartime propaganda newspaper whose
purpose is more to boost the morale of the troops than to inform. Effectively summarizing the final hour of Full Metal Jacket is difficult because there isn't a clear story; it's as if Kubrick had in mind a series of distinct moments to convey a series of distinct and often ironic messages, but unable to piece together some sort of connective, narrative tissue, he just strung them all together. The dialogue lacks the vulgar, darkly comedic sparkle of its first forty-five minutes, not only seeming clunky and with bafflingly inept attempts at humor, but awkwardly and woodenly delivered by its actors. The movie's two most compelling characters don't make the transition to Vietnam, and although a slew of new warriors are introduced -- perhaps most memorably, Adam Baldwin as Animal Mother, donning a helmet with "I am become death" scrawled on it -- all of them, Joker included, are rather thinly drawn. The battle sequences are devastatingly brutal yet more intriguingly intimate than many war films, particularly the climax with Joker's squad pinned down in the ruins of a war-ravaged town against an unseen sniper. I'm left with the impression that Kubrick wanted the moments focusing squarely on the Marines in Vietnam to be compelling and the battles to be difficult to watch; at least from my perspective, the reverse is true.
Full Metal Jacket is an oddity, featuring an extraordinarily compelling first forty-five minutes before making the transition into an uneven, scattershot final hour set in Vietnam. Although the film is not a complete success, and it's a movie I'd say I appreciate more than enjoy, its moments of brilliance are such that Full Metal Jacket demands to be seen, if only once.
Video: Full Metal Jacket has aired on some of the high-definition movie channels at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, but as far as I'm aware, this is the first home video release of the film that retains its theatrical framing (or close enough to it). Although I would think the natural tendency would be for the studios to churn out tech demo after tech demo in these early days to show off the format's visual strengths, Full Metal Jacket doesn't fit that mold. It's not a grainy movie, although there are certainly individually grainy shots (particularly in low light), and some level of film grain is visible throughout much of its nearly two hour runtime. The image is more detailed than a traditional DVD, though not to the same extent as other HD DVD releases to date. A more robust palette appears to be the most noticeable improvement. This is a fine presentation of Full Metal Jacket, but HD DVD early adopters should rein in their expectations.
Audio: Although the original monaural audio is not provided, the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio takes few liberties, directing the bulk of the action to the front speakers. There isn't much in the way of dynamic range, with just a few light, low-frequency belches from the subwoofer and the dialogue sounding discernable but flat and somewhat strained throughout. Alright, but nothing beyond that. Along with the English soundtrack, Dolby Digital Plus tracks are also offered in Spanish and French alongside subtitles in each of those three languages.
Supplements: Just a full-frame trailer.
Conclusion: Full Metal Jacket may be one of Kubrick's more uneven films, but it's inarguably still an important movie and deserves to be seen at least once. Recommended.
Please note that the image in this review was lifted from Guardian Unlimited's article "Reign on my Parade". It's just meant to be eye candy and isn't necessarily indicative of the way this HD DVD looks.
"Aye aye, sir."
Stanley Kubrick's penultimate, schizophrenic film Full Metal Jacket is a deromanticization of war. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, its first forty-five minutes are spent at a Marine boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina. R. Lee Ermey stars in a career-defining role as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, a legendarily profane drill instructor who spends the next eight weeks shaping a batch of meek maggots into killers. Some adapt more quickly than others, especially Joker (Matthew Modine). More problematic is the dumpy, perpetually smirking Gomer Pyle, played to perfection by Vincent D'Onofrio, an actor who can convey more with one facial expression than most can with a twelve minute monologue. Hartman mocks and demeans his charges to steel them in preparation for the cruelty of war, but Gomer Pyle takes the brunt of his torment. The drill instructor's sadistic tactics eventually seem to pay off as the slothful, overweight recruit starts to resemble an actual Marine, but the trade-off is the loss of his humanity, and a confrontation between this broken man and his tormentor is inevitable.
Kubrick then shifts the setting to Vietnam just prior to the Tet Offensive. Joker is a correspondant for "Stars and Stripes", a wartime propaganda newspaper whose
purpose is more to boost the morale of the troops than to inform. Effectively summarizing the final hour of Full Metal Jacket is difficult because there isn't a clear story; it's as if Kubrick had in mind a series of distinct moments to convey a series of distinct and often ironic messages, but unable to piece together some sort of connective, narrative tissue, he just strung them all together. The dialogue lacks the vulgar, darkly comedic sparkle of its first forty-five minutes, not only seeming clunky and with bafflingly inept attempts at humor, but awkwardly and woodenly delivered by its actors. The movie's two most compelling characters don't make the transition to Vietnam, and although a slew of new warriors are introduced -- perhaps most memorably, Adam Baldwin as Animal Mother, donning a helmet with "I am become death" scrawled on it -- all of them, Joker included, are rather thinly drawn. The battle sequences are devastatingly brutal yet more intriguingly intimate than many war films, particularly the climax with Joker's squad pinned down in the ruins of a war-ravaged town against an unseen sniper. I'm left with the impression that Kubrick wanted the moments focusing squarely on the Marines in Vietnam to be compelling and the battles to be difficult to watch; at least from my perspective, the reverse is true. Full Metal Jacket is an oddity, featuring an extraordinarily compelling first forty-five minutes before making the transition into an uneven, scattershot final hour set in Vietnam. Although the film is not a complete success, and it's a movie I'd say I appreciate more than enjoy, its moments of brilliance are such that Full Metal Jacket demands to be seen, if only once.
Video: Full Metal Jacket has aired on some of the high-definition movie channels at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, but as far as I'm aware, this is the first home video release of the film that retains its theatrical framing (or close enough to it). Although I would think the natural tendency would be for the studios to churn out tech demo after tech demo in these early days to show off the format's visual strengths, Full Metal Jacket doesn't fit that mold. It's not a grainy movie, although there are certainly individually grainy shots (particularly in low light), and some level of film grain is visible throughout much of its nearly two hour runtime. The image is more detailed than a traditional DVD, though not to the same extent as other HD DVD releases to date. A more robust palette appears to be the most noticeable improvement. This is a fine presentation of Full Metal Jacket, but HD DVD early adopters should rein in their expectations.
Audio: Although the original monaural audio is not provided, the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio takes few liberties, directing the bulk of the action to the front speakers. There isn't much in the way of dynamic range, with just a few light, low-frequency belches from the subwoofer and the dialogue sounding discernable but flat and somewhat strained throughout. Alright, but nothing beyond that. Along with the English soundtrack, Dolby Digital Plus tracks are also offered in Spanish and French alongside subtitles in each of those three languages.
Supplements: Just a full-frame trailer.
Conclusion: Full Metal Jacket may be one of Kubrick's more uneven films, but it's inarguably still an important movie and deserves to be seen at least once. Recommended.
Please note that the image in this review was lifted from Guardian Unlimited's article "Reign on my Parade". It's just meant to be eye candy and isn't necessarily indicative of the way this HD DVD looks.
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