Full Metal Jacket

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

  • 97% of critics liked it
    (58 reviews)

  • 93% of users liked it
    (280,684 ratings)

Stanley Kubrick's return to filmmaking after a seven-year hiatus, this film crystallizes the experience of the Vietnam War by concentrating on a group of raw Marine volunteers. Based on Gustav Hasford's novel The Short Timers, the film's first half details the volunteers' harrowing boot-camp… More

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R, 1 hr. 56 min.
Directed By
Stanley Kubrick, Francesca Cima
Written By
Gustav Hasford, Michael Herr, Stanley Kubrick
Genres
Drama, Action & Adventure
In Theaters
Jun 17, 1987 Wide
On DVD
Jun 29, 1999
Warner Bros.

Critic Reviews

  • Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine

    Full Metal Jacket is not a realistic film -- it is horror-comic superrealism, from a God's-eye view -- but it should fully engage the ordinary movie grunt.

  • Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

    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.

  • , Variety

    An intense, schematic, superbly made Vietnam War drama.

  • Desson Thomson, Washington Post

    Although the elements of the story are simple and precise, Kubrick infuses a dreamlike, fatalistic quality.

  • Rita Kempley, Washington Post

    Full Metal Jacket, ice and wildfire, order and chaos, is intellectual war, hard thought.

Read all 22 critic reviews

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

  • KJ P


    This particular film is a hard one to review. To me, it feels like two very different films. The first half is a story about the events leading up to the main war, while developing superb characters and a conclusion to the first act that is breathtakingly brutal. I felt like… More

  • Martin S


    This was good...I'm not sure why it was good. It's not a story from start to finnish. Things just happen....then more things happen. It's good things but....still.....carry on...

  • Zach B


    With war films, there are plenty of ways, in my opinion, to go wrong. For starters, most film makers make the film predicable if you already know the history of the war that is featured. Then you have the dull acting with the best being people yelling at each other and firing guns.… More

  • Graham J


    Kubrick's war masterpiece in two acts. Filled with great performances and startling sequences.

  • Matheus C


    A guerra do Vietnã é vista pela ótica de Kubrick em uma das obras mais marcantes já produzidas sobre o assunto. Nascido para Matar é obviamente dividido em dois atos - o primeiro, superior, mostra um grupo de recrutas da marinha sob o rigoroso treinamento fascista do Sgt. Hartman (em… More

Read all 20 featured audience ratings

Cast

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