Full Metal Jacket Stanley Kubrick

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected reviews to give the film a score of 90% based on reviews from 84 critics and an average rating of 8.3/10. The summary states; "Intense, tightly constructed, and darkly comic at times, Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket may not boast the most original of themes, but it is exceedingly effective at communicating them."[107][108] Another aggregator, Metacritic, gave it a score of 76 out of 100 based on 19 reviews, which indicates a "generally favorable" response.[109] Reviewers generally reacted favorably to the cast—Ermey in particular—[110][111] and the film's first act about recruit training.[112][113] Several reviews, however, were critical of the latter part of the film, which is set in Vietnam, and what was considered a "muddled" moral message in the finale.[114][50]

Richard Corliss of Time called the film a "technical knockout," praising "the dialogue's wild, desperate wit; the daring in choosing a desultory skirmish to make a point about war's pointlessness," and "the fine, large performances of almost every actor," saying Ermey and D'Onofrio would receive Oscar nominations. Corliss appreciated "the Olympian elegance and precision of Kubrick's filmmaking."[110] Empire's Ian Nathan awarded the film three stars out of five, saying it is "inconsistent" and describing it as "both powerful and frustratingly unengaged." Nathan said after the opening act, which focuses on the recruit training, the film becomes "bereft of purpose"; nevertheless, he summarized his review by calling it a "hardy Kubrickian effort that warms on you with repeated viewings" and praised Ermey's "staggering performance."[113] Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "harrowing, beautiful and characteristically eccentric." Canby echoed praise for Ermey, calling him "the film's stunning surprise ... he's so good—so obsessed—that you might think he wrote his own lines."[b] Canby said D'Onofrio's performance should be admired and described Modine as "one of the best, most adaptable young film actors of his generation," and concluded Full Metal Jacket is "a film of immense and very rare imagination."[115]

Jim Hall, writing for Film4 in 2010, awarded the film five stars out of five and added to the praise for Ermey, saying his "performance as the foul-mouthed Hartman is justly celebrated and it's difficult to imagine the film working anything like as effectively without him." The review preferred the opening training segment to the later Vietnam sequence, calling it "far more striking than the second and longer section." Hall commented the film ends abruptly but felt "it demonstrates just how clear and precise the director's vision could be when he resisted a fatal tendency for indulgence." Hall concluded; "Full Metal Jacket ranks with Dr. Strangelove as one of Kubrick's very best."[112] Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader called it "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."[116] Variety called the film an "intense, schematic, superbly made" drama that is "loaded with vivid, outrageously vulgar military vernacular that contributes heavily to the film's power" but said it never develops "a particularly strong narrative." The cast performances were all labeled "exceptional"; Modine was singled out as "embodying both what it takes to survive in the war and a certain omniscience."[111] Gilbert Adair, writing about Full Metal Jacket, commented: "Kubrick's approach to language has always been of a reductive and uncompromisingly deterministic nature. He appears to view it as the exclusive product of environmental conditioning, only very marginally influenced by concepts of subjectivity and interiority, by all whims, shades and modulations of personal expression."[117]

Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert called Full Metal Jacket "strangely shapeless" and awarded it two and a half stars out of four. Ebert called it "one of the best-looking war movies ever made on sets and stage" but said this was not enough to compete with the "awesome reality of Platoon, Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter." Ebert criticized the film's Vietnam-set second act, saying the "movie disintegrates into a series of self-contained set pieces, none of them quite satisfying" and concluded the film's message is "too little and too late," having been done by other Vietnam war films. Ebert praised Ermey and D'Onofrio, saying: "These are the two best performances in the movie, which never recovers after they leave the scene."[50] Ebert's review angered Gene Siskel on their television show At The Movies; he criticized Ebert for liking Benji the Hunted more than Full Metal Jacket.[118] Time Out London disliked the film, saying: "Kubrick's direction is as steely cold and manipulative as the régime it depicts," and that the characters are underdeveloped, adding "we never really get to know, let alone care about, the hapless recruits on view."[114]

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[119]

British television channel Channel 4 voted Full Metal Jacket fifth on its list of the greatest war films ever made.[120] In 2008, Empire placed the film at number 457 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time."[121] In 2010, The Guardian ranked it 19th on its list of the "25 best action and war films of all time."[122] The film is ranked 95 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list, which was published in 2001.[123]

Accolades

Between 1987 and 1989, Full Metal Jacket was nominated for eleven awards, including an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay,[124][125] two BAFTA Awards for Best Sound and Best Special Effects,[126] and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for Ermey.[127] It won five awards, including three from overseas; Best Foreign Language Film from the Japanese Academy, Best Producer from the Academy of Italian Cinema,[128] Director of the Year at the London Critics Circle Film Awards and Best Director and Best Supporting Actor at the Boston Society of Film Critics Awards for Kubrick and Ermey respectively.[129] Of the five awards it won, four were awarded to Kubrick and the other was given to Ermey.