Full Metal Jacket

Parris Island, 1967: The new recruits arrive at the US Marine Corps training camp. Subjected from the very first moment to the humiliating arbitrariness of the drill sergeant, they are reduced to what is expected of them for deployment in Vietnam: killing at any cost and the complete renunciation of humanity and morality. All great war films depict war by asking the question, "What is man?" Everything that might remind adolescent American males of pride and sensitivity, responsibility and thought, is broken, devastated, and nullified in the "training camp." Libido, repurposed as a lust for killing, turns against the "enemy." Instead of jungles or exotic buildings: nothing but the enervating lunar landscape of war. The senseless slamming of bullets into flesh. (E.S./H.T.)