Full Metal Jacket 1987

Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune: There is a real fear at the heart of this monstrously armored, desperately defensive film. Read more

Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune: It's a great piece of filmmaking, diminished only by a second act that fails to live up to the first act of the Marines in training. Read more

Sheila Benson, Los Angeles Times: It may seem too spare, too clinical, its moments of war even too familiar for some. But, aiming for minds as well as hearts, Kubrick hits his target squarely. Read more

Desmond Ryan, Philadelphia Inquirer: If his considerable achievement in this long- awaited film falls short of his Olympian standards, there is a reason that ought to give Kubrick some satisfaction. The world has caught up with Kubrick and what he has to say. Read more

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. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: What gives this story its power is not really its originality, but the relentlessness of Kubrick's black-comic vision and the tightness of his focus. Read more

Vincent Canby, New York Times: 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. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: No one who sees Full Metal Jacket will easily put the film's last glimpse of D'Onofrio, or a great many other things about Kubrick's latest and most sobering vision, out of mind. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: [A] strangely shapeless film from the man whose work usually imposes a ferociously consistent vision on his material. Read more

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. Read more

Geoff Andrew, Time Out: Kubrick's direction is as steely cold and manipulative as the regime it depicts, and we never really get to know, let alone care about, the hapless recruits on view. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: An intense, schematic, superbly made Vietnam War drama. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Although the elements of the story are simple and precise, Kubrick infuses a dreamlike, fatalistic quality. Read more

Rita Kempley, Washington Post: Full Metal Jacket, ice and wildfire, order and chaos, is intellectual war, hard thought. Read more