Full Metal Jacket: Between Good and Evil

Full Metal Jacket: Between Good and Evil (2007)

*** (out of 4)

Documentary about the making of Stanley Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET doesn't feature all the original cast members and there are quite a few questions that go unanswered but on the whole it's a pleasant 30-minutes. Jan Harlan, R. Lee Ermey, Vincent D'Onofrio, Kevyn Major Hward, Adam Baldwin and Jay Cocks are just a few of the people who are interviewed. The most interesting stories are about Kubrick himself and we get a wide range of stories including why he wanted to make the film, how long it took to shoot and of course how many takes the actors had to go through. I loved the story about Kubrick getting upset with one of the actors who questioned all the takes so the director pretty much told him to act better and they could move on. Ermey tells another wonderful story about the director driving them around looking for locations and driving off into a ditch where the vehicle got turned upside down. Without missing a beat the director just got out of the wreckage and started talking about the shot he wanted. The documentary tells these type of stories and we also get a nice one from D'Onofrio about how he got in the film and what luck it actually was. The only disappointing thing is that we're not old too much about all the stuff that is missing from the movie. We get some brief talk about an alternate ending but that's pretty much it. It's rumored that the film had about an hour worth of unused footage but nothing is discussed and none of Kubrick's daughter's documentary is featured.