Full Metal Jacket is a movie that concentrates more on the hardships, and personal conflicts that soldiers went through whilst serving in the United States Marine Corps. We see PVT. Joker (Matthew Modine), Eightball (Dorian Harewood), Gomer (Vincent D'Onofrio), Animal Mother (Adam Baldwin), Cowboy (Arliss Howard) and other men go through one of the toughest experiences of their lives, USMC boot camp. We watch as they are "Trained to kill" and tested almost to their breaking point.

This movie concentrates on the "mechanics" of the US Marine Corps soldier in Vietnam. We see the beginnings of a soldier when they are put through boot camp and made into a killing machine. The drill instructor, Sergeant Hartman(Lee Ermey) is mean, nasty and he's vicious, and regards the recruits as a lesser life form than maggots, and he makes it quite obvious by not being able to stop yelling profanities at the recruits, so I suppose you could regard him as a stereotype of a Drill Instructor. Whilst I was not in the USMC, the boot camp part of the movie (first half) is the most accurate depiction of the USMC boot camp I have seen.

Boot Camp just goes on and on for the men, and for one particular recruit, it is the beginning of the end. We watch a man called PVT Pyle, a slightly overweight incompetent failure who can't even dress himself, and it becomes quite clear to us that he has no place in the military. We see him get picked on by Hartman for being the way he is, and we watch as he gets the rest of the platoon in trouble for things that he has done, or hidden! He ends up being hated by everyone, and becomes expert with his M-14 rifle, something which he is commended on by the Drill Instructor, but this expertise is just an obsession on PVT Pyle's behalf, and this leads him into madness which all ends in the bathroom.

PVT Pyle's final actions were a very farfetched part of the movie, as I have never seen or heard about a recruit going so mad at Recruit Training that they kill their Drill Instructor before putting an M-14 in their mouth, sure I have seen recruits quit because the pressure got too tough, but never commit suicide.

The remaining recruits all proceed to graduate from Boot Camp the day after, and are posted to their units. We then start to follow PVT Joker whilst he is serving in Vietnam with a media unit. He then is put on an assignment which subsequently unites him with his boot camp friends. He follows his infantry friends around in Hue City, and experiences the Tet Offensive.

Whilst in the city, we see some of the soldiers be "befriended" by local prostitutes. This wasn't uncommon during the war, soldiers would pay for pleasure, and occasionally they would fall in love. This could also lead to all kinds of complications, including children!

Unlike We Were Soldiers, this movie does not concentrate on the horrors of war, but it concentrates on the people of war. Unlike most Vietnam War movies, the war scenes are set in an urban environment. This is in Hue City. I did not fight have much fighting experience in urban environments, most of mine were in the jungle, therefore I cannot compare these experiences to my own, but the attitudes of a few of the people in the combat scenes of Full Metal Jacket were very farfetched. An example includes when Animal Mother disobeys direct orders to run out into sniper fire for the pure reason of saving his two friends who are already almost dead. The fact that he went out alone and totally disregarded his platoon seemed pretty unusual to me.

During the depiction of the Tet Offensive, I think the makers of this movie merely breezed over the factual information and substituted their own storyline. They probably did this on purpose, because they wanted us to follow the characters, not the events, they did not make a huge deal with the fighting in Hue City, they did not really show alot of the more major parts of the fighting, such as the Tet offensive, but they showed us the characters in their own plot.

All in all, this movie is not the most accurate when it comes to the experiences of the US Soldiers fighting in Vietnam, but it concentrates on character development rather than actual events, which I think was done on purpose. The most accurate part of the movie was the first half, whilst the men were in boot camp, but it all turned to be inaccurate the second that PVT Pyle shot himself.

I would not recommend this movie if you want to get an insight into the events of the Vietnam War, but it has an excellent depiction of the US Marine Corps boot camp. If you were to watch it purely for entertainment, I would recommend it, as it has an excellent storyline.