Directed by Stanley Kubrick • 1987 • United Kingdom, United States
Starring Matthew Modine, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D’Onofrio
Director Stanley Kubrick rips the skin from the face of war to expose the dehumanizing effect of the military on the people fed into its meat grinder in this lacerating and darkly comic journey through a human-made hell. Through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old recruit (Matthew Modine)—from his first days in the Marine Corps boot camp as his superiors try to strip of him his individuality and re-create him as a Marine, to the horrors of the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam—FULL METAL JACKET examines the damage war inflicts on the collective human soul with a cutting irony and terrifying intensity that few films have matched.
Up Next in Legacies of War: Vietnam Across the Divides
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Three Seasons
Directed by Tony Bui • 1999 • Vietnam, United States
Starring Đơn Dương, Nguyễn Ngọc Hiệp, Harvey KeitelThe first American feature to be filmed in Vietnam in the aftermath of the war, Tony Bui’s gorgeous, richly textured portrait of everyday life in a rapidly changing, increasingly westernized ...
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Casualties of War
Directed by Brian De Palma • 1989 • United States
Starring Michael J. Fox, Sean Penn, Don HarveyOne of the most harrowing Hollywood films to confront the legacy of the Vietnam War, CASUALTIES OF WAR is based on the true story of a squad of soldiers caught in a moral quagmire. Witness to a vile ...
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Regret to Inform
Directed by Barbara Sonneborn • 1998 • United States
In this powerful and poetic documentary, the legacy of the Vietnam War is explored from a perspective rarely acknowledged: that of the survivors whose lives continue to be impacted by the loss of their loved ones. Twenty years after her husban...
