Full Metal Jacket Full Metal Jacket Full Metal Jacket is a 1987 war film directed, co-written, and produced by Stanley Kubrick and starring Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio and Adam Baldwin. The screenplay by Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford was based on Hasford's novel "The Short-Timers" (1979). The storyline follows a platoon of U.S. Marines through their training, primarily focusing on two privates, Joker and Pyle, who struggle to get through boot camp under their abusive drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and the experiences of two of the platoon's Marines in the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. The film's
Full Metal Jacket episodes of the film. For instance, the climactic episode with the sniper is a conflation of two episodes in the book, from Parts II and III. Jenkins thinks the film presents this passage more dramatically but in less gruesome detail than in the novel. The film often has a more tragic tone than the book, which relies on callous humor. Joker in the film remains a model of humane thinking, as evidenced by his moral struggle in the sniper episode and elsewhere. He works to overcome his own meekness, rather than to compete with other Marines. The film omits the