Okay, here's a challenge, what problems could you possibly have with Full Metal Jacket?
Thought you raised this question and I made a partial answer in another discussion in this forum, but I can't find it now, so will try again.
First of all,
FMJ is two seperate movies joined ridiculously at the spine like Siamese twins. The first half about boot camp and the second half about being in country in Nam have nothing to do with each other except that a couple of the characters have the same names in each film.
Second, I know the Marines like pretending they're the hardest hardasses in the world, but that Gunny was totally unbelieveable. The Gyrenes occasionally make news in boot camp by marching a platoon into the swamps and drowning half of them or by beating in some recruit's skull in that pugil stick practice that no other service uses, but do you think for a moment a gunny could make a recruit choke himself or that even the dumbest recruit would be dumb enough to do it? Let me give you an example--early October 1961, I'm in my first week of Army basic training at Fort Carson, Colo. I'm in the process of entering my barracks on a snowy day when I spot a Lt. Colonel coming down the sidewalk at a right-angle to me. I'm in the process of reaching for the door knob with my left hand, trying to salute the officer with my right, and just at that moment I slip on a patch of ice and am struggling to keep on my feet. Not a pretty performance. The officer calls me to a halt and puts me at attention. Then he proceeds to instruct me in the proper way to give a salute. But first he asks permission to touch my hand and wrist to position them properly in a salute. So here's an Army officer asking permission to touch a soldier in '61 vs a movie gunny slapping and choking recruits in '67. Marines may be different, but not that different. Hell, even Patton got in trouble for slapping soldiers and had to beg Ike to keep his command--what would have happened if CBS got word that Marine gunnys were slapping and choking recruits during an unpopular war like Nam?
Second, I don't think the gunny sergeant was all that tough for all his colorful vocabulary. You want to see a really tough movie drill instructor, go watch Jack Webb as
The DI. Webb put the fear of the Corps in to his recruits without ever once using the F-word. Or catch Lon Chaney in his silent role as a DI so tough he doesn't have to raise his voice to recruits. The Corps voted him an honorary Marine gunny for that role.
Third, not even the Marines let recruits walk around with loose rounds. Once in basic training, our DIs forgot to have us clear our weapons before leaving the rifle range. They realized their mistake by the time we got back to the company area, so they had us form up and do inspection arms, which consisted of bringing our M-1s to a port position, sliding open the bolt and take a quick look down to be sure no round was stuck, then closing the bolt and pulling the trigger. When we did, there was a KA-POW as a round was fired--some idiot failed to observe a round was jammed in his rifle. We all fell face down in the mud when it went off. After that, every round was carefully counted when it was handed out and again when the extra ammo was collected with the solumn promise that the next idiot who left the firing range with a live round would be court martialed. So I don't buy Gomer Pyle walking around with two live rounds to kill his sergeant and himself.
Thing is, I really didn't dislke
FMJ but I frankly don't remember that much about it. The fatal confrontation scene in the latrine, of course. The scene where he asks, "Does this mean Ann-Margaret won't be coming?" The scene when they're bargaining with the prostitute and one guy asks if she or her pimp would be interested in a used RVN rifle--"never fired, only dropped once" in a reference to our less than enthusiastic South Vietnamese allies. And the final scene of the Marines singing the Mickey Mouse Club song as they moved toward the river.
Mostly I just wonder how the movie would have turned out under a different director and if it had stuck closer to the original book. That was "The Short-Timers" but the director thought people wouldn't understand that title and substituted
FMJ, which he got from an arms catalog. But the country is full of ex-GIs from World War II, Korea, Nam, and peacetime who are familar with "short-timer." I never heard the term "full metal jacket" during my 3 years in the Army.
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