What If Full Metal Jacket Was The Only Thing You Knew About the Military?
How Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece got me all too ready for basic training.
I first watched Full Metal Jacket in high school, in 1999, as a way to school myself up on what basic training would be like.1 This was a time before reality TV shows about the military and the ability to “Google” anything you wanted to know. I was grasping at straws.
The films available for me to study were basically GI Jane (where Demi Moore shaves her…