Full Metal Jacket three to four times a week, for hours at a time. Kubrick had already written a detailed treatment, and Kubrick and Herr got together at Kubrick's home every day, breaking down the treatment into scenes. From that, Herr wrote the first draft. The filmmaker worried that the book's title might be misread by audiences as referring to people who only did half a day's work and changed it to "Full Metal Jacket" after discovering the phrase while going through a gun catalogue. After the first draft was completed, Kubrick phoned in his orders, and Hasford and Herr mailed their submissions
Full Metal Jacket Ermey, calling him "the film's stunning surprise ... he's so good—so obsessed—that you might think he wrote his own lines". Canby also said D'Onofrio's performance should be admired, and he called Modine "one of the best, most adaptable young film actors of his generation". Canby concluded: "Full Metal Jacket" was "a film of immense and very rare imagination". Jim Hall, writing for Film4 in 2010, awarded the film 5 out of 5 stars and added to the praise for Ermey, saying his "performance as the foul-mouthed Hartman is justly celebrated and it's difficult to imagine the film working anything like