Undoubtedly one of the most memorable characters in movie history is Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, the drill instructor played by R. Lee Emery in Stanley Kubrick's second great anti-war movie, Full Metal Jacket. It is a towering performance; a relentless assault on the senses as he drills his recruits into the ground in order to prepare them for the war in Vietnam. Emery was a drill sergeant himself and ad libbed much of the dialogue, with Matthew Modine and Vincent D'Onofrio playing two very different recruits, James "Joker" Davis and Leonard "Pyle" Lawrence. Joker's voice over provides the anchor from which Kubrick's extended study of the brutality of war, and while the combat sequences are somewhat overshadowed by the incredible first act, in which Pyle's mental state crumbles into a psychotic ball of fury, Full Metal Jacket offers a profoundly shocking insight into the brainwashed military mentality and its devastating consequences. One of the most impressive aspects of Full Metal Jacket - besides the incredible performances from Emery and D'Onofrio, who beat Robert de Niro's record for gaining weight for a film with Raging Bull - is the ingenious way in which Kubrick and his production designers managed to transform a run down gas works into war torn Vietnam. Modine and others were less than happy about this - the place was asbestos and hundreds of other chemicals.
