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Summary: The story of an 18-year-old marine recruit named Private Joker - from his carnage-and-machismo boot camp to his climactic involvement in the heavy fighting in Hue during the 1968 Tet Offensive. [Warner Bros.]
Equates sex and death - those two favorite concerns of the adolescent male - like few films I've seen outside of Cronenberg's ouevre. And yet the Marines' testosterone-fueled rage is ultimately rendered hollow in the face of wartime horrors, as their transformation from empathetic human beings into remorseless killing machines is completed. Like so many other Kubrick films, unjustly chastized - but unlike most, its critical reevaluation is yet to come.
On my most recent re-watch I noticed two new things. First, I noticed some compassion coming from Drill Sergeant Hartman. Previously I had just seen him as breaking balls, but now I see that he was really trying to help Pyle, and was actually proud that he finally made a soldier out of him. Second, I noticed the symbolic regression of Pyle into childhood. Sucking his thumb, crying in bed, needing help lacing his shoes, needing help getting dressed. Food for thought.
A hard film to rate. The boot camp stuff is pretty much brilliant, but the second half is so different that it feels unstructured, which is strange for Kubrick.
It's not really that the second half is inferior to the first, it's that the first and third acts (with R. Lee Ermey and the sniper, respectively) are superior to the second act, which is not as entertaining or gripping. Not as consistent as Kubrick's other films, but entertaining in spite of its flaws.
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