20 War Movies EVERY Film Fan Should Have Seen

Directed by The Shining helmer Stanley Kubrick, 1987's Vietnam war drama Full Metal Jacket was the third in the director's trio of anti-war films.

Following Paths of Glory and Dr Strangelove, this bracingly austere and daringly detached film eschewed the high drama and psychedelic excess which had come to define the Vietnam war film as a sub genre.

Instead, this pitch black comedy imagined training camp as a shaggy dog story ending in pointless murder suicide punchline, only for the subsequent tour in Vietnam to offer an equally aimless, viciously violent end to most of our characters.

By the close, these soldiers are either dead or dead inside, and Kubrick's film makes for a caustic corrective to overly emotional operatic tragedies.