I watched Full Metal Jacket a few days ago, but even now I have almost no words for how great that movie is. As of right now, I seriously think it’s my favorite Vietnam movie of all time. It may be the most “real” feeling depiction of the war that I’ve ever seen: no hyper-stylized melodrama, no grand Shakespearean speeches about the true meaning of freedom, just a cold, unforgiving look at how decent people can be turned into monsters. Some people complain that the movie has no real point, but I’d argue that was very much intentional: Vietnam was a long, ugly conflict, with the lines between “good” and “evil” being basically nonexistent. The fact that there is no point is, ironically, the point.
I think the biggest irony of the movie is that the main character, private Joker, is constantly talking about how’s he training to become a killer, and in the end his only confirmed kill is a mercy kill, and this mercy kill is a teenage girl who was taking down all these supposed trained killers with relative ease.