...Kubrick's notion of how the military changes ordinary people into killing machines.
Kubrick constantly punctuates his movie with the pop music of the era, music that does double duty establishing the time setting and creating a mood. While the director filmed the movie's Parris Island section on location in South Carolina, he chose to film the Vietnam segment in England, importing truckloads of palm trees for the occasion. The bombed-out city of Hue bears a remarkable and prescient resemblance to parts of Iraq today.
The climactic scene in part two involves a sniper sucking the men of Joker's squad into trying to rescue a fallen comrade and themselves getting killed. It's a familiar situation, popularized in Erich Maria Remarque's antiwar novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" about seventy years earlier, but it continues to carry a punch.
All the same, the second half's war drama isn't as compelling as the first-half's boot-camp training, perhaps because the second half is more conventional, more predictable. (Although, to be fair, some viewers may get annoyed by the constant screaming in the movie's first half and prefer the relative quiet of the battlefield.) By the time the movie is finished, Kubrick has made his point, if in a hyperbolic sort of way. No matter how compassionate your soul, war will desensitize you in the end.
Video:
I mentioned above that the image this time out is in widescreen (1.78:1), rather than in the 1.33:1 ratio that Kubrick preferred for video presentation. Obviously, Warner Bros. wanted to fill out an entire widescreen television's dimensions, so they went with the movie's theatrical-release ratio (or something close to it). Now maybe that was the problem I noticed with the video quality; maybe matting the top and bottom of the frame and blowing up the middle made minor defects in the print more noticeable. Whatever, about half the time I couldn't tell if the movie was in high definition (1080) or a good, high-bit-rate anamorphic transfer in standard definition.
Colors are rich and natural, never too dark, never too light or faded, and black levels are as strong as one would expect. Some scenes look definitely high-def, with strong, rich hues and sharply delineated outlines and features. Other shots don't look as good, with much of the picture covered by a thin but observable layer of grain. Put another way, the picture generally looks better than it does in standard definition but perhaps not enough better to warrant buying a whole HD-DVD setup just for this one movie. On the other hand, I'm sure a lot of fans will simply want the film for its widescreen aspect ratio and for the improved quality of at least some of the scenes.
Audio:
WB provide Dolby Digital Plus as the only audio option on the disc, and it sounds fairly ordinary, even reproduced through the 5.1 analogue outputs on my Toshiba A1 player. There is not a lot of surround activity, with the possible exception of the tiniest bit of musical ambient information in the rear channels. In fact, there isn't a very wide front stereo spread, either. Moreover, the dialogue can at times sound a touch pinched and nasal. In its favor, though, the audio is clear and dynamic, with a robust impact, so maybe all things even out.
Extras:
If you recall Warners' last edition of this movie (The New Kubrick Collection), you'll remember the disc came only with a theatrical trailer as an option. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that this HD-DVD version comes with only a theatrical trailer, too. Unlike the feature film, the trailer is in full-frame. In addition, there are thirty-nine scene selections, but no chapter insert; and English, French, and Spanish spoken languages and subtitles.
Parting Thoughts:
Kubrick showed his usual meticulous care in filming "Full Metal Jacket," sometimes to the point of the movie and its characters seeming almost artificial. But the director surely gets his antiwar sentiments across, and no one can accuse the film or the filmmaker of being dull. The opening forty-five minutes are riveting and live on in memory long after the second-half battle sequences have faded away. "Full Metal Jacket" may not be the best film Kubrick ever made, but it's still Kubrick, meaning it's better than almost everything else in filmdom.
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