This movie is hard for me to rate. In so many ways Full Metal Jacket is my favorite Vietnam--nay, war movie--ever. That aside, there was a lot to like here. I enjoyed the transformation of Taylor from a cleancut rookie into a battle-hardened soldier who's actions end up mirroring the actions of a commanding officer he despises.
The movie is wrought with symbolism, everything from the U.S. soldiers honouring their dead by bringing them home whereas they discard the Vietnamese dead with bulldozers and group burial plots to rebel and Nazi flags seen, although, the Nazi flag seemed out of place to me, and I'm not sure what it represented.
One thing that stuck out to me was the lack of soldier code names. Sure, there were some, but these are names that were used in iconic fashion in FMJ, yet here the soldiers mostly go by their last name. I can't help but wonder if Stone was trying to differentiate his film from the onslaught of Vietnam films that came out in the 1980s.
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