Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Director
Stanley Kubrick
Cast
Matthew Modine,
Adam Baldwin,
Vincent D'Onofrio,
R. Lee Ermey,
Dorian Harewood,
Arliss Howard
Genre
Drama,
War
Smart-aleck Private Davis, quickly christened "Joker," endures the rigors of Marine basic training with his fellow recruits. Sent to Vietnam as a journalist, Joker observes the dehumanizing effects of the Vietnam War and is eventually forced to participate in the bloody Battle of Hué.
The New York Times by Vincent Canby
Kubrick's harrowing, beautiful and characteristically eccentric new film about Vietnam, is going to puzzle, anger and (I hope) fascinate audiences as much as any film he has made to date... A film of immense and very rare imagination.
Newsweek by Jack Kroll
As brutally unsparing as "Platoon" was, it was ultimately warm and embracing. Kubrick's film is about as embracing as a full-metal-jacketed bullet in the gut. [29 June 1987]
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Jay Scott
May be the best war movie ever made...Different is Kubrick's artistry and control, and his almost perverse, but philosophically progressive, refusal to impart to chaos a coherent narrative contour.
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
What makes the film stunning is less its metaphorical scheme than its cinematic style. Always a matter of flowing camera movement, Kubrick has photographed much of the action with long "traveling shots" that capture time and space as a seamless whole, not fractured into the bits and pieces of standard editing techniques. [26 June 1987]
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Elliptical, full of subtle inner rhymes...and profoundly moving, this is the most tightly crafted Kubrick film since "Dr. Strangelove," as well as the most horrific; the first section alone accomplishes most of what "The Shining" failed to do.
Time by Richard Corliss
A technical knockout. [29 June 1987]
USA Today by Mike Clark
A contender for the year's best film.
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
The most eloquent and exacting vision of the war to date... Inspired with technique rather than overblown with it, Kubrick, the filmmaker's filmmaker, lays one on you.
Variety
An intense, schematic, superbly made Vietnam War drama.
Los Angeles Times by Sheila Benson
In a superb cast of mostly unknowns -- with the exception of Matthew Modine and Dorain Harewood -- D'Onofrio, who put on 60 pounds for this pivotal role, and Ermey are exceptional. [26 June 1987]
Variety by Staff (Not Credited)
An intense, schematic, superbly made Vietnam War drama.
Chicago Tribune by Dave Kehr
The film has undeniable power, but it's an unusual and unsettling power, a product of a collision between red-hot material and the cool serenity with which Kubrick observes and accepts it. [26 June 1987]
TV Guide Magazine
A perversely fascinating movie--one that answers no questions, offers no hope and has little meaning. In a way this is perfect for what the film has to say about war, but you find yourself numbed and apathetic as the film progresses.
San Francisco Chronicle
The concluding image of men silhouetted against the dying flares of explosives, as they march to the raucous refrain of the Mickey Mouse Club theme, is masterly, but leaves a viewer curiously discomfited. Whereas "Platoon" shattered civilian complacency about that war, Full Metal Jacket is merely numbing. [26 June 1987]
Wall Street Journal by Julie Salamon
By most standards of conventional film narrative, this movie is a mess. [25 June, 1987, p.22(E)]
Loading recommendations...
Loading recommendations...