Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Full Metal Jacket rating: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic

IMDb8.2/10· 850K votes

Rotten Tomatoes90%

Metacritic78%

TMDb8.119/10· 11K votes

With 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, backed by 8.2/10 on IMDb and 78/100 on Metacritic, critical reception of this film has been very positive.

About Full Metal Jacket

A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the U.S.-Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.

Cast of Full Metal Jacket

• 

  Matthew Modine

  as Pvt. Joker

• 

  Adam Baldwin

  as Animal Mother

• 

  Vincent D'Onofrio

  as Pvt. Pyle

• 

  R. Lee Ermey

  as Gny. Sgt. Hartman

• 

  Dorian Harewood

  as Eightball

• 

  Kevyn Major Howard

  as Rafterman

• 

  Arliss Howard

  as Pvt. Cowboy

• 

  Ed O'Ross

  as Lt. Touchdown

• 

  John Terry

  as Lt. Lockhart

• 

  Kieron Jecchinis

  as Crazy Earl

• 

  Kirk Taylor

  as Payback

• 

  Tim Colceri

  as Doorgunner

Full Metal Jacket facts

Budget

$30M

Box office

$46.4M

Our take on Full Metal Jacket

Stanley Kubrick's 1987 war drama follows a pragmatic U.S. Marine through the U.S.–Vietnam War, tracing how the conflict dehumanizes his fellow recruits from a brutal boot camp to bloody street fighting in Hue. The film is famously split in two: an unsparing look at how training strips men down, then the chaos and moral fog of combat. Kubrick's cold, precise style keeps sentimentality at arm's length, favoring irony and dread over easy heroics. It suits viewers who want a war film that interrogates the machinery behind soldiering rather than glorifies it. Demanding and clinical, it rewards patience with images that are hard to shake.