10 Best Performances In Stanley Kubrick's Films

10. Matthew Modine As Private Joker - Full Metal Jacket

Kubrick assigned Matthew Modine a monumental task as the carefree Pvt. Joker. He is the glue that connects Full Metal Jacket’s two wildly different segments and the audience’s window into the destruction war wreaks on young men.

In boot camp, Joker must both blend in with the rest of his fellow recruits as they’re stripped of their individuality and stand out enough to make an impression on the audience. Once he makes it to Vietnam, he slowly loses his innocence while retaining his personality as a light-hearted jokester. Most actors would stumble over these fine lines, but Modine rides them effortlessly.

Even ideologically, Joker is a dual character. While he's an idealist who believes in peace on earth, his stated goal throughout the film is to get a confirmed kill. These traits seem like a contradiction on paper, but Modine blends them and creates a likable, three-dimensional protagonist.

While most of Full Metal Jacket's supporting roles are big and loud, Modine plays everything under the surface. He wears Joker’s gradual descent on his bright, bespectacled eyes, and nowhere is that clearer than the film’s climactic scene where he puts a young female sniper out of her misery. The camera focuses solely on Modine, and he makes his final transition from the cheerful wiseass we’ve grown to love to a hardened killer with a thousand-yard stare.