Full Metal Jackt & Platoon: Movies from the Front

Full Metal Jacket and Platoon were similar in so many ways. Both try to show the viewer just how much the line between right and wrong, good guys and bad guys get blurred. However, Full Metal Jacket differs from Platoon in on crucial way: it explores deeper into the psychological effects on a soldier in war.

Full Metal Jacket follows the story of soldiers from the first week of training thru major battles. It shows how boys from Small Town, USA are taught to think they are “born to kill”, that “there rifle is there best friend” and that to hesitate before firing means certain death. Platoon takes the viewer from the first touchdown in Vietnam, to a devastating last battle scene that takes the main character out of the field. It shows the process of the loss of innocence, and how boy soldiers turn into man killers. Both movies show how these soldiers are meant to think they can only stay alive if they shoot without hesitation and to kill all they suspect, and how combat reinforces this mentality.

FMJ and Platoon also show how Vietnam War soldiers slip slowly into paranoia and fear. These men are in a country they are told they are trying to liberate. Yet the people they are trying to free are trying to kill them. They begin so suspect everyone, even innocent Vietnamese peasants. They become unsure who’s side they are fighting for, but they still have to fight, and it drives them over the edge, “shooting anything that moves” as if it is there only way to get out. In Platoon, the scene in which Sgt. Barnes shoot the old Vietnamese women, the other soldiers around rationalize his kill, insisting that the women must have been a spy for the N.V.A. Similarly in Full Metal Jacket, when Rafterman and Pvt. Joker are in a helicopter and the soldier across from them is shooting farmers in the rice fields, because “Anyone who runs is a VC. Anyone who stands still is a well-disciplined VC”.

In both Full Metal Jacket & Platoon, soldiers are dehumanized and made to become paranoid of their surroundings. Both films show in raw detail, just what went down in Vietnam, and why it affects the survivors today. One can see why these men were driven over the edge and blurred the difference between good and bad.