Full Metal Jacket

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Seven years after The Shining, Kubrick made Full Metal Jacket, an adaptation of Gustav Hasford's Vietnam War novel The Short-Timers. It was filmed in a derelict gasworks in the London Docklands — adapted as a ruined-city set — making it visually very different from any other Vietnam film of the era.

Instead of tropical jungle, the second half depicts urban warfare. The film contains Kubrick's trademark characteristics: ironic music, portrayals of men being dehumanised, and extreme attention to detail. As recruits have their heads shaved, "Goodbye Sweetheart, Hello Vietnam" plays; as Marines patrol ruins, the Mickey Mouse Club theme plays as sardonic counterpoint.

Author Michel Ciment writes: "In the transition from man to weapon, Kubrick underlines the process of dehumanization — the same contradiction between the mechanical and the living that is manifest in A Clockwork Orange."

Co-star Matthew Modine noted one notable review: "The first half of Full Metal Jacket is brilliant. Then the film degenerates into a masterpiece." Kubrick achieved a "newsreel effect" by making Steadicam shots deliberately less steady than in The Shining.