In a 1987 Time Magazine review of Full Metal Jacket, Richard Corliss breaks down Stanley Kubrick's film on multiple levels, providing a superb analysis of the movie as a whole. Corliss covers the plot as well as camera work, cinematography, diegetic, and non-diegetic elements of the movie. He speaks about Full Metal Jacket in a way that makes me want to watch the movie again just to be able to appreciate how Kubrick has taken every aspect of a film, perfected each piece, and then wrapped them all into one great movie.
If doing a review for Time was not enough evidence that Richard Corliss knows a thing or two about movies, the way he starts his review certainly does the job.
“Act I: As the country crooner sings 'Goodbye, sweetheart, hello, Viet Nam,' 17 Marine recruits get their heads shaved. The long, defiant hair of the late 1960s falls to the floor; the young men look sullen or stern. Do they know that this is a pre-op for a lobotomy?”
Not only does Corliss show that he understands how Kubrick has broken the film into three acts, but he also analyzes a short scene of no more than a few minutes into a dark foreshadowing of future events to come in both the first act and the rest of the movie. He particularly notes specific shots in the scene as well as the song playing in the non-diegetic background.
Further elaborating on Kubrick's use of a removed “God's-eye view” camera perspective, Corliss explains how “Kubrick's majestic camera tracks across the barracks, it ascends obstacle courses, it glides past the soldiers, then abruptly cuts to close-ups, to study their pain head on.” Clearly Corliss understands how directors use the camera and scene transitions in order to create a certain effect for the viewer.
Richard Corliss does an outstanding job of reviewing Full Metal Jacket. He shows an understanding of both the narrative of the film and is well versed in analyzing the work put into every frame of the movie. It is no wonder he considered the film “a technical knockout.”
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