10 Dumbest Ways Movie Characters Got Themselves Killed

Admittedly almost everyone in Kubrick’s cold, clinical Vietnam war drama is guilty of thoughtlessness during the film’s punishing runtime. Some are peer-pressured into brutalising a friend and later murdering a POW, some are pushed to the point of psychotic break by the vicious psychological torture of boot camp, and plenty end up running straight into sniper fire due to misguided ideas of heroism.

But it’s undeniable that the horrors of war leave the entire cast so broken that their decisions are rooted less in abject ignorance and more in a collective abandonment of hopes, ideals, and morals. Dumb Ways to Get Killed is practically the purpose of the film.

Except in the case of R Lee Ermey’s iconic drill sergeant, whose demise is almost laughably idiotic even when the film’s dour and bleak message is taken into account.

After months of torturing Vincent D’Onofrio’s tragic private “Gomer Pyle”, Erney’s sergeant awakens to find him sitting alone in a bathroom during the dead of night, armed and laughing manically. The private is a crack shot, the sergeant is unarmed. How does he defuse the situation?

Why, by returning to abusing the private, of course! The gambit pays off as well as you’d guess.